Trip from Clewiston to Fort Myers

We had a beautiful day on the water today. The weather was in the 80s and we had very little wind which means, we motored all day.
We pulled away from Rowland Martin Marina this morning around 7:00 going west. We went by another forest fire around 9:00 and we ended having to wash the boat down to get rid of all the black ashes which landed on our boat as we went down the water way. We only saw smoke and no fire. Must have been a big one.
We went through three locks on our trip today. The first one lowered us 8 feet and the other two about 2-3 feet more. All we had to do was motor into the lock and hold on to the rope beside the wall to keep our boat from moving while we were in the lock. Most locks take about 30 minutes. We had to wait 30 minutes to get into the last one because it had already taken in another boat coming east.
We had a mild accident today trying to get through the Alva bascule bridge. Due to current repairs being made, the operator only opened half the bridge and it was not totally opened and the operator said we could pass if we liked. We questioned whether the left side was opened enough for a 55 foot clearance and he didn’t reply. Well, we tried and did not make it cleanly. The top of the mast hit and it appears that only the wind direction and wind monitor were broken off. We were lucky, but we will have the mast looked at by professionals soon to make sure there are no other damages. We are anchored just five miles outside of Fort Myers tonight in a nice anchorage and will be in Cape Coral by midday tomorrow.
We cannot believe we have completed out trip in just 21 days and we were visiting four of those days.
Hopefully we will be there tomorrow with no more mishaps.