Geocaching in the Ten Thousand Islands, Bezabor’s Big Everglades Adventure
(posted from home)
(this post covers 11-18 March, 2008)
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Tuesday, 18 March-
I woke around 0700 at Shrewsbury and was ready to move on. Around 0800 I pulled in the driveway and rang our doorbell and knocked our special knock to let Labashi know it was me. We spent the morning catching up and went out to lunch in Camp Hill. By mid-afternoon I was dragging so I took a nap, then brought in my laptop and spent the evening blogging and talking with my brother Maypo while Labashi went to an arts event in Harrisburg.
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Monday, 17 March-
Today was a “gallop-to-the-barn” day. I awoke late but refreshed after a quiet night at the Wal-mart and got underway by 0900, intending to make Lumberton, NC my goal. That’s 9 hours of driving and should about do it for the day.
But I reached Lumberton by 1630 and the day was just getting nice for driving. I had had a fresh wind from right side much of the day and that wind had just died and made driving easier. At Lumberton, I had a good, vinegary North Carolina barbeque plate with hush-puppies at the Southfield’s there by the Wal-mart and was back on the road by 1700.
I thought I’d like to get through North Carolina and up into Virginina, perhaps Richmond, before stopping for the night and checked on Wal-mart locations. I hit Richmond by 2130 or so, found the Wal-mart and got an okay to stay overnight. But as I went out to the van, I realized I was wide awake and could knock off a few more miles if I went on to Fredricksburg. And that made me think of the trip around the Washington and Baltimore beltways tomorrow morning. I’d be in the late rush approaching Washington and wasn’t looking forward to that. Why not just keep on going? I didn’t want to wake Labashi up at something like 0300 so wanted to stop somewhere after Baltimore and it struck me that there’s a Wal-mart along I-83 at Shrewsbury, PA. That became my goal.
The van was running great in the cooler, denser air of evening and the moon had come up so it didn’t seem like driving in a dark tunnel—in fact it was very nice. I listened to a great discussion on C-SPAN radio about the upcoming Supreme Court review of the Washington DC gun ban as I circled the beltway. I had a great view of the Washington Monument from the Wilson bridge between midnight and 0100. It was almost magical—four and five ultra-smooth lanes open to me, a few cars and trucks out so that it didn’t seem to be the middle of the night. And the miles were just a-flyin’ by. The Baltimore beltway was also a breeze and before I knew it I Mocha Joe was zipping up I-83. I reached Shrewsbury at 0200, went into the Wal-mart and did a little shopping, then crashed in the van, very happy to be so close to home after just waking up in Palatka 18 hours ago.
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Sunday, 16 March-
Well, what do you do after a little adventure like that? I thought I’d take a relaxation day to figure out what to do next and decided to zip over to the Starbucks on Marco Island to start. As I drove, my thoughts started coming together. I had had my Everglades adventure. I had no interest in driving all the way down to Flamingo and ‘doing’ the south Everglades. Labashi and I had rented a skiff and had done a half-day trip up Whitewater Bay and the Joe River last year so I’ve already seen a good bit of that area. And, frankly, there’s not that much to see… at least in terms of wildlife. The area is an incredibly rich resource for fishing and I could see getting ‘into’ that enough to want to stay out a few days for that but for now, I’m done. And leaving the trip incomplete leaves me with a reason to return some time in the future--- some time I want an excuse for another Florida trip.
My original plan had been to meet my brothers in Daytona for a few days of Bike Week, then we’d head to the Everglades for a week of exploring and a little fishing. When it came time for them to go home, I’d spend the rest of the month enjoying the backcountry as I worked my way up into Florida’s panhandle, particularly the Apalachicola National Forest before heading home. But life intruded on my plans and my brothers had to cancel (or maybe they had some premonition about what they’d be getting into!). That turned into my going to the Panhandle first and I happened to hit several cold fronts coming through, bringing heavy rains (and tornadoes) and several multiple-day periods of 30-some-degree nights. Lesson learned: go to SOUTH Florida in February— NORTH Florida is too cold (though I had some great 70-degree days).
So the bottom line is I’ve been out 40-plus days and I’m ready to head home. The bugs are getting bad in the mangroves and it’s getting hot (high 80’s the last two days) so I think it’s time.
I made my final decision over my coffee and headed north up 951 and on to Immokalee. The trip up from there up US 27 and 19 was mostly uneventful—if you don’t count a near-accident south of Sebring.
I was driving along at my steady 55 miles per hour and a large, white Expedition-style SUV was beside me, slowly pulling ahead. All of a sudden the idiot woman driver hit the brakes hard and I could see her arms pulling left very hard to turn the steering wheel left. We were on 27 which consists of two lanes each direction, split by a grass median. I believe she had suddenly decided she wanted to turn at one of the turn-arounds across the median strip but she had made her decision MUCH too late and doing something like 60 miles per hour… and with traffic close behind her!!!!!! I hear her tires start to squeal and in my left mirror I see her SUV starting to lurch sideways, just as my boat passes by her. I can’t imagine why she doesn’t abandon the turn but by then there’s smoke flying off all four wheels and I can see the front wheels turned hard left. And as she slides left off the road, I can see another big white SUV behind her hove into view, it too smoking all four tires to avoid rear-ending her. But it’s lurching to its right and into the lane right behind me where yet ANOTHER SUV, this one a black one, starts smoking the tires in an extremely hard braking maneuver and a lurch to its right. I can’t believe none of them rolled—it must be the new brake-control sensors correcting for those maneuvers that kept them upright. In any case, the black one goes off the right side of the road onto the grass, the first white one slides to a stop on the far side of the median strip (almost into the oncoming passing lane) and the second white one slides to a stop in our passing lane, then drifts off into the median strip. Amazingly, I’m not involved at all. It was like watching a movie. The first slide had to have happened very close to the boat but then I was past and it was all happening behind me, a deadly little dance, filled with smoke and adrenaline.
By late afternoon I was in the Ocala National Forest and thought I’d stop in for the night at Farle’s Prairie, where I had stayed on the way down. But there I found the campground nearly full, an odd thing for a Sunday night, I thought. There was a big green bus there and I believe the campsites were taken up by people from the bus since I didn’t see other cars. Must be some group. Looked like a bunch of skinny hippy kids. I could have stayed but it was only 1630 by then anyway so I continued up through the Ocala to the Palatka Wal-mart for the night. I bought some supplies to see me home, pushed the ‘I’m OK’ button to warn Labashi that I’m on the way home, and spent the evening blogging about my Big Adventure.
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Saturday, 15 March-
I woke around dawn but merely looked around a bit and went back to sleep until waking fully at 0800. The boat was covered in dew so I wiped down the instruments, seats, and cooler just to make them a little more comfortable. I pulled out my tide info and began to figure out my day. I was clearly done with going into the southern Everglades via Broad Creek. That might be possible with another person and perhaps a good saw but I just plain could not do it myself so I was done heading south.
I saw from the tidal chart that high for the day was at 1330 and 2200. That meant I’d have to leave right away and travel faster going in than I had come out to make the first one or I’d have to navigate around that shallow Chokoloskee Bay after nightfall. The former seemed the best choice.
I packed things away and was underway by 0900. I had near-ideal conditions. The wind was light (though due to rise to 15 knots) and from my back so the bays were calm, the tide was rising and would be at a good level at Chokoloskee by the time I got there, and I had plenty of fuel. I had used up both my three and six-gallon tanks in coming out and this morning had refilled them, leaving me with 11 gallons extra.
For the trip back I settled into about a 13-mile-per-hour plane. Sometimes it would get up above 15 but I was mostly in the 12-13 mile-per-hour range. The trip back was uneventful. I did see more fishermen out on this Saturday morning but the ones I briefly talked to said they weren’t doing well. With the higher tide and my new-found knowledge of where to look for trouble spots, I never touched the whole five hours to Chokoloskee. I also had a very cool experience in Chevalier Bay. I saw a dolphin nearby and throttled down to see what he would do. This happened to be in a shallow clear-water area and he soon approached the boat. I could see him turning on his side and looking up at me. He even passed under the boat in shallow water—I’m surprised he had room to make it under without touching the boat. VERY cool!
I got back to Chokoloskee Bay around 1300 and that began the nerve-wracking part of the journey. The Bay is very shallow and the water was completely opaque. I was putting my faith entirely on the course shown on the GPS—the same GPS that sometimes showed my track right across islands out there in the Everglades. But it turned out to be easy enough—with one minor problem. I was chugging along at slow speed following the recommended course-line when the line suddenly stopped. The map had ‘changed pages’ and the new page didn’t have a recommended course on it. Fortunately I could see the recommended course from the paper map and I could pick up the unofficial marks well enough to see what they were doing. I did touch briefly at one point but only until I could get the prop up a bit.
Back at Glades Haven I loaded up and then putted over to the Visitor’s Center to put the gear away. What an adventure I had had! I hadn’t intended on doing any night-running but had done fine with that and had even gotten some sleep out there all alone in the Everglades. Wow.
After packing up I drove to Collier-Seminole State Park and booked a site for the night. I took the boat to the marina area and flushed the salt-water from the motor and washed down the boat. I do indeed have some new scratches, but I was pretty lucky overall—they’re very minor and just give the boat some character.
That evening I drove to the library and regaled Labashi with tales of the Everglades. I had been pushing the ‘I’m OK’ button every hour or so and that made it easy to tell her what was going on at that place and that point in time on the big adventure. Afterwards I returned to my campsite and slept VERY well.
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Friday, 14 March-
I woke to my alarm at 0700 and thought I must have set it wrong—it’s just barely dawn at 0700 here. I drove to the Gulf Coast Visitor’s Center at Everglades City and talked with the rangers about my plan. They were fine with it and allowed me to file an open-ended float plan. That’s not a great idea normally since the purpose of a float plan is to send someone out to find you if you don’t return by a certain date/time. But since I have the SPOT satellite messenger, I can push the “I’m OK” button every so often and that sends an email to Labashi, showing my position at that time. I added that info to the float plan so the rangers would know they can check up on my last-known whereabouts by calling her at any time.
I then transferred my gear to the boat and called Labashi to give her the 24-hour dispatch number for the rangers and told her that’s who to call if I push the ‘Help’ button on the SPOT. If I need emergency assistance, I’d push the ‘911’ button but I wouldn’t want to call out something like an emergency services helicopter if I just broke down or got lost.
I launched from Glades Haven, a commercial launch ramp across the street from the Visitor’s Center. They charge $15 for the launch but I can leave the vehicle for free at the Visitor’s Center and there’s some security there while it’s $20 to launch and $10 per night for the vehicle at the other ramp, (Outdoor Resorts in Chokoloskee) and I don’t think there’s any security.
My first challenge was how to get around the very shallow Chokoloskee Bay to the entrance to the Lopez River. The GPS BlueChart showed two possibilities. I chose the southern route. Today was one of those occasional one-tide days so I believe we were something like half-tide as I made my way out a route marked a 2-foot-minimum depths with one-foot-minimums on both sides. I can do the twos but not the ones. In any case my outboard hit bottom twice as I eased around Chokoloskee Island and then again as I entered the Lopez River, making it a bit of a nerve-wracking journey until I got into the deeper water of the Lopez.
As I proceeded up the Lopez past marker 127 I noticed I had a tidal-flow current coming down at me but it was only about a knot, if that. I chugged along at about 7 miles per hour, that speed giving me a sense I’m going slow enough to see the shallower spots yet still making some progress.
After the Lopez I went through a series of bays linked by ‘creeks’ only a few boat-widths wide. At the entrances and exits of these creeks and near any of the small mangrove islands there was likely to be some shallow water and I hit bottom three or four times before I started recognizing the pattern.
I could sometimes see a small difference in water color at the shallow areas but the wind had picked up, making it more difficult. Yesterday the marine forecast for this area had called for five to ten knot winds but today had bumped it up to ten-to-fifteen and I think I was seeing a good fifteen, particularly on the big open bays. The boat felt plenty sea-worthy crossing the bays but tended to splash waves on the windward (starboard in this case) side and the wind would carry spray up over the side and wet down the GPS and radio (not to mention me!). At first I crossed these white-capped areas slowly—around six miles per hour—but then found I could minimize the splashing by speeding up to about 12-14 miles per hour for the crossing.
Using the GPS was great. Visually picking up the steering marks was made much easier by seeing the approximate angle to them on the BlueChart. And these marks were generally hard to see. These aren’t the hi-viz green and red international navigation markers but rather numbered little brown signs made in the shape of a pointer. The pointer points which side of the mark to pass by the mark.
My first stop was several hours into the trip when I pulled in at Darwin’s Place campsite near marker 87. I had only been there a few minutes when I heard voices and soon two guys paddled up in their kayaks. One noticed my Pennsylvania boat registration and asked what part of the state I was from. When I said ‘Harrisburg area’, he said, ‘Where exactly—I live in that area too!”. One guy turned out to be from Middletown and the other from Newberrytown, very close to my home town of York Haven. It seems incredible that I’ve been meeting so many people from so near my home area. These two guys were spending a week making a circle from the Turner River launch on the Tamiami Trail, out into the Ten Thousand Islands, then up to Sunday Bay and back.
The afternoon winds felt strong as I crossed Oyster Bay and Large Huston Bay but began to diminish toward the end of the afternoon as I neared the Rodgers River Chickee. I had considered making this one my goal for the day when I was thinking of getting a permit for an overnight stay and that would have been a good choice. I just wasn’t sure at the time that I’d make it this far in the time allotted.
I continued into the Broad River and began thinking about where I’d stay the night. I checked the guidebook’s description of Broad River and saw it’s rated high for tidal influence, whatever that means. At the time I was thinking it might mean a strong tidal flow and I decided I’d rather push on late today to get down the Broad River and out into the Gulf and circle around to enter Broad Creek, then try to get up the Harney River to a wide spot to anchor. I knew I was getting in trouble time-wise but thought it better to get around on a higher tide than have my way blocked by the shallow water of low tide in the morning. As I entered the gulf, I saw I only had about a half-hour of daylight left. What I didn’t plan for, however, was losing the visibility of the recommended course on the GPS. The recommended course line is a light-pink in color and I was having a little trouble with it in daylight because of my sunglasses. But now the problem was on—coming darkness. The line was important because it marked the way between one-foot depths on both sides of me and without some idea of where I should be it would be easy to become confused on which way to turn if I were to hit bottom. I dug through my boat bag for a flashlight and finally found one that helped. About that time the GPS switched over to its night-colors and I could see the line clearly.
I was surprised how far out in the Gulf I had to go to get around the shallow water and the sun set well before I entered Broad Creek. I sped up once inside the creek and assured of deeper water, using the light of the sky reflecting in the water for awhile. But then Bezabor’s Big Adventure started.
As I eased up Broad Creek I saw the banks beginning to close in and that’s not a big deal…until the overhanging branches start getting in the way. Now remember this is happening as I’m losing the light of day. I don’t have headlights on the boat, nor even a spotlight. I do have two small handheld ‘tactical’ flashlights, one a 65-lumen two-battery model, the other is supposed to be a 180-lumen 3-battery model (I’d say it’s more like 130 or so). I started with the 3-cell one but it would get hot after 15 minutes so I’d turn it off for awhile and use the 2-cell one, then switch back.
I can see Marker 16 on the chart and I’m fairly sure I’m in the right place—I just had no idea the creek would do this. And the creek keeps getting even smaller. I soon have to duck under tree branches. Then I have to go from side to side to find an opening through the trees, looking for cut-off branches. The boat is often being brushed on both sides by mangroves branches. For some reason (thank God), there are no bugs. I’m also not seeing or hearing any wildlife— I’m only seeing an occasional red reflection of an eye. I am looking as closely as I can for any snakes or gators but don’t really have a lot of time to look. My problem becomes one of not having enough hands. I need one hand for the flashlight, one for the steering wheel, and one for the throttle/gear shift. I can’t put the flashlight in my mouth because I need to be constantly panning it side to side and I’m standing up holding the light as high as I can sometimes, other times scanning my sides. This goes on and on, all the time getting worse and worse. So long as the canoe-size tunnels through the trees are long-wise, i.e., going the same way I am, I’m good. But when they start making turns, I’m in trouble. I keep running into spider webs with my face. They don’t seem to be occupied, but who knows? In any case, I don’t have time to look closely right now. I can’t maneuver the boat around quickly enough and soon see a big branch clobber the compass, knocking it askew and spinning the GPS about on its mount. I quickly grab the handheld marine radio and stow it to keep it from being knocked into the water. I collapse the GPS mount to make as low a profile as possible and decide it’s a must-save-at-all-costs item and consider stowing until I’m out of here (but don’t).
I finally start getting into serious difficulty. Some sadist thought it would be fun to leave heavy (4-5 inch) branches extending more than half-way across the little ‘creek’ in one direction about a canoe-width’s distance from another heavy branch extending out from the other bank. Both have their ends cut off to allow a canoe to pass after making a 90-degree turn in one direction, then the other. It would have been a simple matter at the time to cut each off about two feet shorter and allow the canoe to pass right through but that would have been too easy.
Anyway, I’m belaboring the point. After something like 45 minutes of this, I finally could go no further. At one point I couldn’t even determine which way the creek went other than the fact that my GPS said it went on ahead of me. Finally, I got myself stuck. I could not move forward any more and I couldn’t move backward to get out of it because that just put me up against the creek bank behind me. That did it—I HAD to go back. Through this I had been telling myself that it would very shortly open up and I’d get to Marker 16, where the creek MUST be more open. And about that time it occurred to me there’s nothing whatsoever to tell me the passageway is any easier at Marker 16 or beyond. I stared at the GPS and the map and wondered whether I had taken a wrong turn and had entered ‘The Nightmare’, a passageway for canoeists which is impossible at low tide but I didn’t think so. I was in Broad Creek, alright. I just had no idea it was anything like this.
I finally just stopped moving, put the motor in idle, and started pushing against the branches to get the boat unstuck and turned half-way around so I could put it back in gear and start maneuvering again. About that time I see a very strange reflection. It was yellow-orange in color and looked to be about the size of a road-side reflector but it horizontal black lines through it—and it blinked. As I neared (where else you gonna go?), whatever it was slipped off the log into the water. To my relief it made a tiny little ‘plop’ sound, perhaps a juvenile gator (I never did see any body to it, though).
Though it had cooled off enough for me to have put on a jacket out in the Gulf, I was now sweating profusely. The boat was covered with mangrove leaves, small broken-off branches, and I was convinced I had all kinds of dents and scratches along the hull, and who-knows-what kind of insects and reptilians aboard. But, all in all, I was doing OK. My glasses were fogging up from my over-exertions but I was more or less keeping my cool. It wouldn’t have taken much, though to change that. Perhaps a cotton-mouth dropping into the boat. Or seeing a one of the Everglades’ pythons. I did know the one thing I didn’t want to do was something stupid like get a branch in the eye or cut myself. I was comforted by having the SPOT satellite messenger in case I needed to call for emergency help but I sure wouldn’t want to be in there waiting for that help.
It occurred to me that the tide may be going out and the water getting lower without my noticing. That meant I might spend the night in here and that wasn’t an appealing thought. So I just tried to slowly, ever so-slowly, work my way back out.
I then began seeing familiar branches and that helped calm me down—I was slow but I was getting out. Then the prop hit an underwater branch and the engine quit with a loud clunk. But it started right up again.
So, after about 45 minutes of this, the creek started to open up again. I passed what is shown as the entrance to ‘The Nightmare’ and, yes, I had been proceeding up Broad Creek as planned.
By then it was nearing 2200 and I was entering the shallow waters of the Gulf once more. At the mouths of both Broad Creek and Broad River, there are bars to cross but, hey, I had been through there just a little over an hour ago and I had been making waypoints as I went so I could see my return course on the GPS screen. The tide had gone down a bit, though, so the question was had it gone down too much?
Once out on the Gulf I had the strange experience of ‘pilot’s vertigo’. There appeared to be a fog hanging on the water but I could occasionally see a red flasher off in the distance; obviously there was no fog if I could see the mark. I had a half-moon to light things up a bit but I could not discern the difference between sky and water. The flasher seemed sometimes to be on the water, sometimes to be in the sky. I saw something like this years ago when I had been flying a small plane near Cape May, NJ (I earned my pilot’s license in the mid-Nineties but gave up flying after a year or so because of the expense). As I flew out over the ocean at Cape May, the color of the water and sky were the same and I could not see a horizon ahead of me. Below me I could see small boats and their wakes so that was definitely ‘down’ but I couldn’t see where ‘up’ started. This is ‘pilot’s vertigo’ and can lead unexperienced pilots into an unintentional spin. This is believed to have been at least part of the reason for the JFK-Jr. air tragedy.
In my case, the vertigo took on a left-turn tendency. I felt like I was steering straight ahead but the GPS said I was consistently going left. Only by making what felt like a strong right turn could I stay on course. My senses said I was (in following my course) turning in fairly tight circles to the right, yet the icon on the GPS showed that was not true. I had to consciously tell myself ‘Trust the instruments!’ and keep making that hard right turn to stay on course.
I finally passed the critical low-water point at Broad River with only one light touch aground and then was safely into the four and five-foot depths of the River. I cranked it up to 15 miles per hour and zoomed up the river. I had turned off the flashlight as soon as Broad Creek had opened up enough for me to see the reflected sky on the water—the flashlight was useless at that point except to occasionally turn on if I’d see a dark shape in the water or I wanted to see the bank to try to guess the tide level.
I buzzed upriver for a few miles to Broad River Bay so I could get out of the channel and get well away from the buggy mangroves. There’s a canoeist’s campsite on the lower Broad River and when I had passed it before dark I had seen several campers all decked out in full bug-gear--- completely enclosed in mesh and even wearing mesh gloves (doesn’t THAT sound like fun!).
Once into Broad River Bay I began looking for an out-of-the-way spot and saw it on the GPS. The main course turns out of Broad River Bay at its top, leaving a nice anchorage area for me. There happens to even be an “M” designation there (M is for ‘mud bottom’, good for a dependable anchor-set).
A little after 2300 I was anchored and trying my best to calm relax. I was still keyed up but went about preparing my sleeping quarters. I ultimately decided to simply sleep in the open rather than try to put up the tent. So far I had had no bug problems and I had a nice, gentle breeze that should keep them to a minimum and if they got too bad I could don and sleep in my bug jacket.
I had something to eat and slowly re-arranged the boat to accommodate my air mattress and sleeping bag. The boat was still covered in leaves and branches so this was a good time to toss all that overboard and very carefully look for leftover insects and reptilians. I was relieved to find none of either.
I then wiped down the sleeping area with several of the blue-paper shop towels I’ve learned are great to have along when boating. In the wonderful light of the half-moon I blew up my air mattress and made up my bed. Thinking I was still too keyed-up to sleep, I thought I’d just lie down a bit once that was done. And then a surprising thing happened—I started falling asleep.
At that point a couple of strange things happened. I felt completely safe and secure out there. But as I drifted off, I’d get sudden little urges. I thought I had a couple of mosquitoes around my face and got up and put on my mosquito jacket only to realize there weren’t any mosquitoes. I felt something on my leg and thought, ‘Oh, I forgot to check myself for ticks’ and did so. The the VERY strange one. As I sat up and turned over to get to my knees, out of the corner of my eye I saw a big spider— a tarantula-size one—crawling on my right shoulder. I brushed at it and stood up quickly but already knew it wasn’t real. It was an hallucination. I say this because the spider was like an black outline of a spider. But it had no mass. When I brushed at it I felt nothing, I found nothing on the bed where it would have had to have fallen. And my mind knew it wasn’t real. I didn’t obsessively keep looking for it because I knew it hadn’t been real. I’m not sure how to explain this but my mind saw that it had been two-dimensional rather than three-dimensional—like a cut-out, a figment of my imagination.
After about an hour, my little itches and urges stopped and I fell lightly asleep. I soon woke, enjoying the moon. It was so bright I wondered whether I might get a moon-burn. Yet I could clearly see Orion above me to the south and the Big Dipper to the north.
I woke several times during the night. I was indeed getting some serious dew but it wasn’t really a problem—I’d just have to dry stuff in the morning.
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Thursday, 13 March-
Today was a ‘down’ day, just prepping for the next couple of days. I drove to Marco Island and found a nice little park to spend a few hours relaxing and planning. I’ve been trying to figure out how to reserve a backcountry campsite in the Everglades. The problem is knowing how fast I can navigate out there. Also, given it’s buggy out there, I’d want to stay on chickees rather than ground sites and even then I’d want the ones most exposed to a breeze. Some chickees are built right at the edge of a mangrove island and suffer from the bugs. After searching my options for an hour or so I wasn’t happy. But then I had an idea. If I had a solo backpacking tent, I think I could set it up on the boat. I’d have to shift around my extra gas cans and water can but that might work. I thought I’d test for length by using my two-person backpacking tent as a sample. And the closer I looked the more I realized I might just be able to use that one. I set it up in the parking lot and tried it. It’s just a bit too big but it’s a free-standing tent and I found I could just bend the bows a little more and it would fit. If it were windy I’d have to rig some tie-downs but that would be easy (assuming I could get the tent assembled at all). And that changed everything. I wouldn’t need to get (or pay $10 a night for) permits and I could anchor well away from the mangroves, hopefully in a breeze.
I spent the rest of the day finalizing preparations for leaving on my trip tomorrow. I bought two more gas cans so that gives me a total of 29 gallons of gas and an easy way to manage it. I’ll use the ‘thirds’ rule--- one-third of my gas for going out, one-third for coming back, and one-third in reserve. I’m planning to use about 1 gallon of gas per hour but the thirds rule should keep me from doing something stupid.
By the end of the day I had gone over the checkoff lists provided by the park service and in a guide book and felt ready.
That evening I picked up a pizza and ate half and saved the rest for the trip. I then called Labashi and went over the planning for the float plan before returning to my campsite at Collier-Seminole. I used Collier-Seminole so I could charge up the boat and camera batteries. I also wanted to charge the cell phone but I’ve apparently lost it. I called Labashi and had her send a text message to the cell phone, offering a reward, but I don’t imagine there’s a real good chance of getting it back. The cell phone isn’t a big deal for my little boat trip since there’s no reception in the backcountry anyway but not having it available is going to be a pain.
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Wednesday, 12 March-
Today had less chance of rain and begged to be a geocaching-by-boat day. I launched at Port of Call marina ($10) by 1000 and headed down the Faka-Union Canal. The chug down the canal seems a long one. It’s a manatee zone and the first part is ‘Idle Speed Only’ and then a couple of miles of ‘Minimal Wake’ zone. It’s the better part of an hour before you can open the throttle.
I had decided to go to Camp Lulu, which has a geocache. I used that geocache as my Go-To waypoint. Ah, much better—the GPS now gives me course, speed, and distance rather than just recalculating. I ran aground fairly hard just north of Lulu Key but got off without damage (though the skeg on the outboard has a little less paint now).
As I approached the area of the geocache I saw there was a large group of canoeists camped in that general area so I landed around the turn at an area with deeper water close in. Some Florida good-ole-boys were camped there and they seemed to take quite an interest in me as I approached. It turned out they thought I was a ranger coming to kick them out of the campsite. They thought they might be across the line for the Everglades National Park, which requires permits for all campsites. But I showed them the line on the chart and we were good buddies now so they offered me some fried chicken.
I demurred on the chicken, explaining I had something to do and headed off. As I followed the GPS I realized the geocache had to be somewhere right behind the large group of campers. But as I passed by most of them were under a large tent eating lunch so I waved hello in passing, then cut behind. I found the geocache without much trouble and dropped off two geocoins I’ve had since last August. Labashi and I picked up ‘Northern Trekker’ and ‘RocketBear’ in Churchill, Manitoba and I thought they should go somewhere special and Lulu Key seemed like a good place.
Coming out from the find, I began talking with one of the kids and soon learned they are from Penn State, down on a Spring Break backcountry outing. They canoed down the Blackwater River from Collier-Seminole Park and are headed for Chokoloskee. As we talked more I met the leader, who, after hearing I live near Harrisburg, PA said “I do too!” and it turned out he was from Grantham, about a half-hour from my home.
One kid was from York, another’s parents work at the same place I had worked. Small world, indeed.
I then navigated my way off the marked channel toward Fakahatchee Island and its micro geocache. I noticed the GPS did not seem to be reacting correctly—sometimes Fakahatchee Island would be on my left, sometimes on my right—not a good thing when you are depending on the GPS to keep you ‘found’. I made several waypoints to find my way back if I needed to and continued on, eventually figuring out the Island I wanted was the one of the right. I landed at the designated spot and almost immediately was greeted by swamp-angels (mosquitoes). That’s when I realized I had left the bug-spray in my other pack. But these guys weren’t horrible. Six or seven of them would swarm around for a few minutes and I’d kill a few then they’d seem to disappear. But if I moved to another spot, I’d get another greeting visit.
I worked my way to the geocache and found it after a few minutes of looking. This one is a film canister covered in camo tape, containing nothing but a log book. I signed in and moved on.
Around the corner was a very small grown-over old cemetery, the stones peeking out from under the heavy growth. Several stones appeared to be home-made from concrete. All seemed to have dates of death in the Forties. I’d like to have seen what this island looked like back then.
I didn’t delay in getting back to the boat and launching. And as soon as away from the mangroves, there were no bugs. I had lunch just drifting along there and decided to try navigating across Fakahatchee Bay to a tiny little passage way which would give me a shortcut to the Faka-Union Canal—but there were many 1 and 2-foot depth readings along the way.
It was at this point that I noticed my two compasses weren’t matching at all—they were at best 30-degrees different. And that’s when I learned the GPS is using its internal compass for a heading and that depends on the unit to be horizontal. Just tilting down the unit changed the heading by 30 degrees. So I spent the rest of the trip playing and testing and eventually found the GPS by default switches to the magnetic compass when you slow to under 10 miles per hour. And if the unit is tilted it doesn’t indicate accurately. This combination of things is why the display was acting up earlier. As I came up the due-North-lying Faka-Union canal, I saw the icon for my position actually move in reverse. The direction I was going was north but the GPS map said I was going south. No wonder I was confused earlier!
I made a setting change to tell the GPS to use the GPS compass unless my speed dropped under one mile per hour, THEN switch to the magnetic compass. I’ll have to keep an eye on this. I want the magnetic compass when walking or not moving but the GPS compass when moving in the boat.
I returned to the van about 1730 and took advantage of the wash-down hoses to clean both boat and motor. Then I drove to the library to log my finds on geocaching.com and I talked with Labashi for an hour before updating the blog and returning to the Wal-mart for the night.
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Tuesday, 11 March-
Today was one of those ‘in-between’ days. I have been vexed by an odd occurrence with the new GPS. If I do a ‘Go-To’ on land, the GPS calculates a route and leads me there. But when I tried it on the water yesterday, the GPS just kept going into Calculating mode time and again until I finally had to turn it off by pressing the off button and holding it down for a long time. So the plan today was to drive in to the library for a wi-fi connection and call Garmin about it.
I expected the call to Garmin to be a matter of waiting out a 15 or 20 minute wait for a technician so while waiting I read through all the support info I could find. One solution gave me a hint as to what was going on. When I first started using the GPS to take me to something it would ask “Follow Road? Off-Road? Quit asking?” and after a few times of always selecting the “Follow Road” option I selected the ‘Quit asking” option. So I was in effect telling it to find a route between two points on the water by following a road. No wonder it was mixed up!
Technician Cecil came on the line in about ten minutes and confirmed what I had found and told me how to turn the prompting back on. I had foolishly thought of ‘Off-Road’ as “via dirt roads” and hadn’t considered the marine environment.
The 60CSx is also interesting regarding layering of multiple maps. When I first loaded up the marine charts, I had already loaded up the ‘City Navigator’ maps and the unit has its own set of ‘basemaps’. I had picked up a one-liner of info somewhere that said the 60CSx doesn’t have transparency of maps… if you have more than one set of maps you may not be able to see the other. I found that before I go out on the water, I have to turn off the land maps for south Florida so they don’t interfere with the marine charts for south Florida. But I was doing it by laboriously scrolling down through all the states to get to Florida to turn it off and on. Cecil showed me a way to hide the entire map set in one click and also recommended I turn off (“hide”) the basemap when using the marine charts. Now it’s much easier to switch back and forth.
After messing about in the library, I drove to the Port of Call marina, thinking I’d launch there. But by the time I got there it was getting a little late in the day and we had a 70-per-cent chance of rain in the forecast so I just chatted with the marina guy, a nice kid from Minnesota, and put the trip off until tomorrow. So instead I drove to the nearby Big Cypress Bend boardwalk and walked out through the Fakahatchee—this time with dry feet. I saw a half-dozen gators, a raccoon, and an eagle but it was a little too crowded with tourists.
After that I drove back to Marco Island and launched the kayak in the little marine park. I paddled out to the Gulf to play in the waves a bit, then turned up along a wildlife refuge, marveling at all the shorebirds flying about in flocks of hundreds of birds at a time.
I then paddled back around the inside of the refuge a bit but the tidal current was against me so I called it a day after only an hour-and-a-half of paddling. But it surely was pleasant out there—70-ish temps, setting sun, a light breeze--- pretty nice duty.
After loading up the gear I used the GPS to find a local park and hung out there while eating supper. I had gotten an up-scale pizza for dinner last night and that had been not only supper for last night but also breakfast and lunch for today. At the park I realized what the extras were—they had included a half-loaf of bread plus little containers of olive oil, peppers, and parmesan cheese— perfect for making up an olive-oil sauce for dipping the bread. That was a fantastic treat.
I then headed home to the Wal-mart and read and did some crossword puzzles.
===== end of post =====
(posted from home)
(this post covers 11-18 March, 2008)
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Tuesday, 18 March-
I woke around 0700 at Shrewsbury and was ready to move on. Around 0800 I pulled in the driveway and rang our doorbell and knocked our special knock to let Labashi know it was me. We spent the morning catching up and went out to lunch in Camp Hill. By mid-afternoon I was dragging so I took a nap, then brought in my laptop and spent the evening blogging and talking with my brother Maypo while Labashi went to an arts event in Harrisburg.
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Monday, 17 March-
Today was a “gallop-to-the-barn” day. I awoke late but refreshed after a quiet night at the Wal-mart and got underway by 0900, intending to make Lumberton, NC my goal. That’s 9 hours of driving and should about do it for the day.
But I reached Lumberton by 1630 and the day was just getting nice for driving. I had had a fresh wind from right side much of the day and that wind had just died and made driving easier. At Lumberton, I had a good, vinegary North Carolina barbeque plate with hush-puppies at the Southfield’s there by the Wal-mart and was back on the road by 1700.
I thought I’d like to get through North Carolina and up into Virginina, perhaps Richmond, before stopping for the night and checked on Wal-mart locations. I hit Richmond by 2130 or so, found the Wal-mart and got an okay to stay overnight. But as I went out to the van, I realized I was wide awake and could knock off a few more miles if I went on to Fredricksburg. And that made me think of the trip around the Washington and Baltimore beltways tomorrow morning. I’d be in the late rush approaching Washington and wasn’t looking forward to that. Why not just keep on going? I didn’t want to wake Labashi up at something like 0300 so wanted to stop somewhere after Baltimore and it struck me that there’s a Wal-mart along I-83 at Shrewsbury, PA. That became my goal.
The van was running great in the cooler, denser air of evening and the moon had come up so it didn’t seem like driving in a dark tunnel—in fact it was very nice. I listened to a great discussion on C-SPAN radio about the upcoming Supreme Court review of the Washington DC gun ban as I circled the beltway. I had a great view of the Washington Monument from the Wilson bridge between midnight and 0100. It was almost magical—four and five ultra-smooth lanes open to me, a few cars and trucks out so that it didn’t seem to be the middle of the night. And the miles were just a-flyin’ by. The Baltimore beltway was also a breeze and before I knew it I Mocha Joe was zipping up I-83. I reached Shrewsbury at 0200, went into the Wal-mart and did a little shopping, then crashed in the van, very happy to be so close to home after just waking up in Palatka 18 hours ago.
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Sunday, 16 March-
Well, what do you do after a little adventure like that? I thought I’d take a relaxation day to figure out what to do next and decided to zip over to the Starbucks on Marco Island to start. As I drove, my thoughts started coming together. I had had my Everglades adventure. I had no interest in driving all the way down to Flamingo and ‘doing’ the south Everglades. Labashi and I had rented a skiff and had done a half-day trip up Whitewater Bay and the Joe River last year so I’ve already seen a good bit of that area. And, frankly, there’s not that much to see… at least in terms of wildlife. The area is an incredibly rich resource for fishing and I could see getting ‘into’ that enough to want to stay out a few days for that but for now, I’m done. And leaving the trip incomplete leaves me with a reason to return some time in the future--- some time I want an excuse for another Florida trip.
My original plan had been to meet my brothers in Daytona for a few days of Bike Week, then we’d head to the Everglades for a week of exploring and a little fishing. When it came time for them to go home, I’d spend the rest of the month enjoying the backcountry as I worked my way up into Florida’s panhandle, particularly the Apalachicola National Forest before heading home. But life intruded on my plans and my brothers had to cancel (or maybe they had some premonition about what they’d be getting into!). That turned into my going to the Panhandle first and I happened to hit several cold fronts coming through, bringing heavy rains (and tornadoes) and several multiple-day periods of 30-some-degree nights. Lesson learned: go to SOUTH Florida in February— NORTH Florida is too cold (though I had some great 70-degree days).
So the bottom line is I’ve been out 40-plus days and I’m ready to head home. The bugs are getting bad in the mangroves and it’s getting hot (high 80’s the last two days) so I think it’s time.
I made my final decision over my coffee and headed north up 951 and on to Immokalee. The trip up from there up US 27 and 19 was mostly uneventful—if you don’t count a near-accident south of Sebring.
I was driving along at my steady 55 miles per hour and a large, white Expedition-style SUV was beside me, slowly pulling ahead. All of a sudden the idiot woman driver hit the brakes hard and I could see her arms pulling left very hard to turn the steering wheel left. We were on 27 which consists of two lanes each direction, split by a grass median. I believe she had suddenly decided she wanted to turn at one of the turn-arounds across the median strip but she had made her decision MUCH too late and doing something like 60 miles per hour… and with traffic close behind her!!!!!! I hear her tires start to squeal and in my left mirror I see her SUV starting to lurch sideways, just as my boat passes by her. I can’t imagine why she doesn’t abandon the turn but by then there’s smoke flying off all four wheels and I can see the front wheels turned hard left. And as she slides left off the road, I can see another big white SUV behind her hove into view, it too smoking all four tires to avoid rear-ending her. But it’s lurching to its right and into the lane right behind me where yet ANOTHER SUV, this one a black one, starts smoking the tires in an extremely hard braking maneuver and a lurch to its right. I can’t believe none of them rolled—it must be the new brake-control sensors correcting for those maneuvers that kept them upright. In any case, the black one goes off the right side of the road onto the grass, the first white one slides to a stop on the far side of the median strip (almost into the oncoming passing lane) and the second white one slides to a stop in our passing lane, then drifts off into the median strip. Amazingly, I’m not involved at all. It was like watching a movie. The first slide had to have happened very close to the boat but then I was past and it was all happening behind me, a deadly little dance, filled with smoke and adrenaline.
By late afternoon I was in the Ocala National Forest and thought I’d stop in for the night at Farle’s Prairie, where I had stayed on the way down. But there I found the campground nearly full, an odd thing for a Sunday night, I thought. There was a big green bus there and I believe the campsites were taken up by people from the bus since I didn’t see other cars. Must be some group. Looked like a bunch of skinny hippy kids. I could have stayed but it was only 1630 by then anyway so I continued up through the Ocala to the Palatka Wal-mart for the night. I bought some supplies to see me home, pushed the ‘I’m OK’ button to warn Labashi that I’m on the way home, and spent the evening blogging about my Big Adventure.
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Saturday, 15 March-
I woke around dawn but merely looked around a bit and went back to sleep until waking fully at 0800. The boat was covered in dew so I wiped down the instruments, seats, and cooler just to make them a little more comfortable. I pulled out my tide info and began to figure out my day. I was clearly done with going into the southern Everglades via Broad Creek. That might be possible with another person and perhaps a good saw but I just plain could not do it myself so I was done heading south.
I saw from the tidal chart that high for the day was at 1330 and 2200. That meant I’d have to leave right away and travel faster going in than I had come out to make the first one or I’d have to navigate around that shallow Chokoloskee Bay after nightfall. The former seemed the best choice.
I packed things away and was underway by 0900. I had near-ideal conditions. The wind was light (though due to rise to 15 knots) and from my back so the bays were calm, the tide was rising and would be at a good level at Chokoloskee by the time I got there, and I had plenty of fuel. I had used up both my three and six-gallon tanks in coming out and this morning had refilled them, leaving me with 11 gallons extra.
For the trip back I settled into about a 13-mile-per-hour plane. Sometimes it would get up above 15 but I was mostly in the 12-13 mile-per-hour range. The trip back was uneventful. I did see more fishermen out on this Saturday morning but the ones I briefly talked to said they weren’t doing well. With the higher tide and my new-found knowledge of where to look for trouble spots, I never touched the whole five hours to Chokoloskee. I also had a very cool experience in Chevalier Bay. I saw a dolphin nearby and throttled down to see what he would do. This happened to be in a shallow clear-water area and he soon approached the boat. I could see him turning on his side and looking up at me. He even passed under the boat in shallow water—I’m surprised he had room to make it under without touching the boat. VERY cool!
I got back to Chokoloskee Bay around 1300 and that began the nerve-wracking part of the journey. The Bay is very shallow and the water was completely opaque. I was putting my faith entirely on the course shown on the GPS—the same GPS that sometimes showed my track right across islands out there in the Everglades. But it turned out to be easy enough—with one minor problem. I was chugging along at slow speed following the recommended course-line when the line suddenly stopped. The map had ‘changed pages’ and the new page didn’t have a recommended course on it. Fortunately I could see the recommended course from the paper map and I could pick up the unofficial marks well enough to see what they were doing. I did touch briefly at one point but only until I could get the prop up a bit.
Back at Glades Haven I loaded up and then putted over to the Visitor’s Center to put the gear away. What an adventure I had had! I hadn’t intended on doing any night-running but had done fine with that and had even gotten some sleep out there all alone in the Everglades. Wow.
After packing up I drove to Collier-Seminole State Park and booked a site for the night. I took the boat to the marina area and flushed the salt-water from the motor and washed down the boat. I do indeed have some new scratches, but I was pretty lucky overall—they’re very minor and just give the boat some character.
That evening I drove to the library and regaled Labashi with tales of the Everglades. I had been pushing the ‘I’m OK’ button every hour or so and that made it easy to tell her what was going on at that place and that point in time on the big adventure. Afterwards I returned to my campsite and slept VERY well.
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Friday, 14 March-
I woke to my alarm at 0700 and thought I must have set it wrong—it’s just barely dawn at 0700 here. I drove to the Gulf Coast Visitor’s Center at Everglades City and talked with the rangers about my plan. They were fine with it and allowed me to file an open-ended float plan. That’s not a great idea normally since the purpose of a float plan is to send someone out to find you if you don’t return by a certain date/time. But since I have the SPOT satellite messenger, I can push the “I’m OK” button every so often and that sends an email to Labashi, showing my position at that time. I added that info to the float plan so the rangers would know they can check up on my last-known whereabouts by calling her at any time.
I then transferred my gear to the boat and called Labashi to give her the 24-hour dispatch number for the rangers and told her that’s who to call if I push the ‘Help’ button on the SPOT. If I need emergency assistance, I’d push the ‘911’ button but I wouldn’t want to call out something like an emergency services helicopter if I just broke down or got lost.
I launched from Glades Haven, a commercial launch ramp across the street from the Visitor’s Center. They charge $15 for the launch but I can leave the vehicle for free at the Visitor’s Center and there’s some security there while it’s $20 to launch and $10 per night for the vehicle at the other ramp, (Outdoor Resorts in Chokoloskee) and I don’t think there’s any security.
My first challenge was how to get around the very shallow Chokoloskee Bay to the entrance to the Lopez River. The GPS BlueChart showed two possibilities. I chose the southern route. Today was one of those occasional one-tide days so I believe we were something like half-tide as I made my way out a route marked a 2-foot-minimum depths with one-foot-minimums on both sides. I can do the twos but not the ones. In any case my outboard hit bottom twice as I eased around Chokoloskee Island and then again as I entered the Lopez River, making it a bit of a nerve-wracking journey until I got into the deeper water of the Lopez.
As I proceeded up the Lopez past marker 127 I noticed I had a tidal-flow current coming down at me but it was only about a knot, if that. I chugged along at about 7 miles per hour, that speed giving me a sense I’m going slow enough to see the shallower spots yet still making some progress.
After the Lopez I went through a series of bays linked by ‘creeks’ only a few boat-widths wide. At the entrances and exits of these creeks and near any of the small mangrove islands there was likely to be some shallow water and I hit bottom three or four times before I started recognizing the pattern.
I could sometimes see a small difference in water color at the shallow areas but the wind had picked up, making it more difficult. Yesterday the marine forecast for this area had called for five to ten knot winds but today had bumped it up to ten-to-fifteen and I think I was seeing a good fifteen, particularly on the big open bays. The boat felt plenty sea-worthy crossing the bays but tended to splash waves on the windward (starboard in this case) side and the wind would carry spray up over the side and wet down the GPS and radio (not to mention me!). At first I crossed these white-capped areas slowly—around six miles per hour—but then found I could minimize the splashing by speeding up to about 12-14 miles per hour for the crossing.
Using the GPS was great. Visually picking up the steering marks was made much easier by seeing the approximate angle to them on the BlueChart. And these marks were generally hard to see. These aren’t the hi-viz green and red international navigation markers but rather numbered little brown signs made in the shape of a pointer. The pointer points which side of the mark to pass by the mark.
My first stop was several hours into the trip when I pulled in at Darwin’s Place campsite near marker 87. I had only been there a few minutes when I heard voices and soon two guys paddled up in their kayaks. One noticed my Pennsylvania boat registration and asked what part of the state I was from. When I said ‘Harrisburg area’, he said, ‘Where exactly—I live in that area too!”. One guy turned out to be from Middletown and the other from Newberrytown, very close to my home town of York Haven. It seems incredible that I’ve been meeting so many people from so near my home area. These two guys were spending a week making a circle from the Turner River launch on the Tamiami Trail, out into the Ten Thousand Islands, then up to Sunday Bay and back.
The afternoon winds felt strong as I crossed Oyster Bay and Large Huston Bay but began to diminish toward the end of the afternoon as I neared the Rodgers River Chickee. I had considered making this one my goal for the day when I was thinking of getting a permit for an overnight stay and that would have been a good choice. I just wasn’t sure at the time that I’d make it this far in the time allotted.
I continued into the Broad River and began thinking about where I’d stay the night. I checked the guidebook’s description of Broad River and saw it’s rated high for tidal influence, whatever that means. At the time I was thinking it might mean a strong tidal flow and I decided I’d rather push on late today to get down the Broad River and out into the Gulf and circle around to enter Broad Creek, then try to get up the Harney River to a wide spot to anchor. I knew I was getting in trouble time-wise but thought it better to get around on a higher tide than have my way blocked by the shallow water of low tide in the morning. As I entered the gulf, I saw I only had about a half-hour of daylight left. What I didn’t plan for, however, was losing the visibility of the recommended course on the GPS. The recommended course line is a light-pink in color and I was having a little trouble with it in daylight because of my sunglasses. But now the problem was on—coming darkness. The line was important because it marked the way between one-foot depths on both sides of me and without some idea of where I should be it would be easy to become confused on which way to turn if I were to hit bottom. I dug through my boat bag for a flashlight and finally found one that helped. About that time the GPS switched over to its night-colors and I could see the line clearly.
I was surprised how far out in the Gulf I had to go to get around the shallow water and the sun set well before I entered Broad Creek. I sped up once inside the creek and assured of deeper water, using the light of the sky reflecting in the water for awhile. But then Bezabor’s Big Adventure started.
As I eased up Broad Creek I saw the banks beginning to close in and that’s not a big deal…until the overhanging branches start getting in the way. Now remember this is happening as I’m losing the light of day. I don’t have headlights on the boat, nor even a spotlight. I do have two small handheld ‘tactical’ flashlights, one a 65-lumen two-battery model, the other is supposed to be a 180-lumen 3-battery model (I’d say it’s more like 130 or so). I started with the 3-cell one but it would get hot after 15 minutes so I’d turn it off for awhile and use the 2-cell one, then switch back.
I can see Marker 16 on the chart and I’m fairly sure I’m in the right place—I just had no idea the creek would do this. And the creek keeps getting even smaller. I soon have to duck under tree branches. Then I have to go from side to side to find an opening through the trees, looking for cut-off branches. The boat is often being brushed on both sides by mangroves branches. For some reason (thank God), there are no bugs. I’m also not seeing or hearing any wildlife— I’m only seeing an occasional red reflection of an eye. I am looking as closely as I can for any snakes or gators but don’t really have a lot of time to look. My problem becomes one of not having enough hands. I need one hand for the flashlight, one for the steering wheel, and one for the throttle/gear shift. I can’t put the flashlight in my mouth because I need to be constantly panning it side to side and I’m standing up holding the light as high as I can sometimes, other times scanning my sides. This goes on and on, all the time getting worse and worse. So long as the canoe-size tunnels through the trees are long-wise, i.e., going the same way I am, I’m good. But when they start making turns, I’m in trouble. I keep running into spider webs with my face. They don’t seem to be occupied, but who knows? In any case, I don’t have time to look closely right now. I can’t maneuver the boat around quickly enough and soon see a big branch clobber the compass, knocking it askew and spinning the GPS about on its mount. I quickly grab the handheld marine radio and stow it to keep it from being knocked into the water. I collapse the GPS mount to make as low a profile as possible and decide it’s a must-save-at-all-costs item and consider stowing until I’m out of here (but don’t).
I finally start getting into serious difficulty. Some sadist thought it would be fun to leave heavy (4-5 inch) branches extending more than half-way across the little ‘creek’ in one direction about a canoe-width’s distance from another heavy branch extending out from the other bank. Both have their ends cut off to allow a canoe to pass after making a 90-degree turn in one direction, then the other. It would have been a simple matter at the time to cut each off about two feet shorter and allow the canoe to pass right through but that would have been too easy.
Anyway, I’m belaboring the point. After something like 45 minutes of this, I finally could go no further. At one point I couldn’t even determine which way the creek went other than the fact that my GPS said it went on ahead of me. Finally, I got myself stuck. I could not move forward any more and I couldn’t move backward to get out of it because that just put me up against the creek bank behind me. That did it—I HAD to go back. Through this I had been telling myself that it would very shortly open up and I’d get to Marker 16, where the creek MUST be more open. And about that time it occurred to me there’s nothing whatsoever to tell me the passageway is any easier at Marker 16 or beyond. I stared at the GPS and the map and wondered whether I had taken a wrong turn and had entered ‘The Nightmare’, a passageway for canoeists which is impossible at low tide but I didn’t think so. I was in Broad Creek, alright. I just had no idea it was anything like this.
I finally just stopped moving, put the motor in idle, and started pushing against the branches to get the boat unstuck and turned half-way around so I could put it back in gear and start maneuvering again. About that time I see a very strange reflection. It was yellow-orange in color and looked to be about the size of a road-side reflector but it horizontal black lines through it—and it blinked. As I neared (where else you gonna go?), whatever it was slipped off the log into the water. To my relief it made a tiny little ‘plop’ sound, perhaps a juvenile gator (I never did see any body to it, though).
Though it had cooled off enough for me to have put on a jacket out in the Gulf, I was now sweating profusely. The boat was covered with mangrove leaves, small broken-off branches, and I was convinced I had all kinds of dents and scratches along the hull, and who-knows-what kind of insects and reptilians aboard. But, all in all, I was doing OK. My glasses were fogging up from my over-exertions but I was more or less keeping my cool. It wouldn’t have taken much, though to change that. Perhaps a cotton-mouth dropping into the boat. Or seeing a one of the Everglades’ pythons. I did know the one thing I didn’t want to do was something stupid like get a branch in the eye or cut myself. I was comforted by having the SPOT satellite messenger in case I needed to call for emergency help but I sure wouldn’t want to be in there waiting for that help.
It occurred to me that the tide may be going out and the water getting lower without my noticing. That meant I might spend the night in here and that wasn’t an appealing thought. So I just tried to slowly, ever so-slowly, work my way back out.
I then began seeing familiar branches and that helped calm me down—I was slow but I was getting out. Then the prop hit an underwater branch and the engine quit with a loud clunk. But it started right up again.
So, after about 45 minutes of this, the creek started to open up again. I passed what is shown as the entrance to ‘The Nightmare’ and, yes, I had been proceeding up Broad Creek as planned.
By then it was nearing 2200 and I was entering the shallow waters of the Gulf once more. At the mouths of both Broad Creek and Broad River, there are bars to cross but, hey, I had been through there just a little over an hour ago and I had been making waypoints as I went so I could see my return course on the GPS screen. The tide had gone down a bit, though, so the question was had it gone down too much?
Once out on the Gulf I had the strange experience of ‘pilot’s vertigo’. There appeared to be a fog hanging on the water but I could occasionally see a red flasher off in the distance; obviously there was no fog if I could see the mark. I had a half-moon to light things up a bit but I could not discern the difference between sky and water. The flasher seemed sometimes to be on the water, sometimes to be in the sky. I saw something like this years ago when I had been flying a small plane near Cape May, NJ (I earned my pilot’s license in the mid-Nineties but gave up flying after a year or so because of the expense). As I flew out over the ocean at Cape May, the color of the water and sky were the same and I could not see a horizon ahead of me. Below me I could see small boats and their wakes so that was definitely ‘down’ but I couldn’t see where ‘up’ started. This is ‘pilot’s vertigo’ and can lead unexperienced pilots into an unintentional spin. This is believed to have been at least part of the reason for the JFK-Jr. air tragedy.
In my case, the vertigo took on a left-turn tendency. I felt like I was steering straight ahead but the GPS said I was consistently going left. Only by making what felt like a strong right turn could I stay on course. My senses said I was (in following my course) turning in fairly tight circles to the right, yet the icon on the GPS showed that was not true. I had to consciously tell myself ‘Trust the instruments!’ and keep making that hard right turn to stay on course.
I finally passed the critical low-water point at Broad River with only one light touch aground and then was safely into the four and five-foot depths of the River. I cranked it up to 15 miles per hour and zoomed up the river. I had turned off the flashlight as soon as Broad Creek had opened up enough for me to see the reflected sky on the water—the flashlight was useless at that point except to occasionally turn on if I’d see a dark shape in the water or I wanted to see the bank to try to guess the tide level.
I buzzed upriver for a few miles to Broad River Bay so I could get out of the channel and get well away from the buggy mangroves. There’s a canoeist’s campsite on the lower Broad River and when I had passed it before dark I had seen several campers all decked out in full bug-gear--- completely enclosed in mesh and even wearing mesh gloves (doesn’t THAT sound like fun!).
Once into Broad River Bay I began looking for an out-of-the-way spot and saw it on the GPS. The main course turns out of Broad River Bay at its top, leaving a nice anchorage area for me. There happens to even be an “M” designation there (M is for ‘mud bottom’, good for a dependable anchor-set).
A little after 2300 I was anchored and trying my best to calm relax. I was still keyed up but went about preparing my sleeping quarters. I ultimately decided to simply sleep in the open rather than try to put up the tent. So far I had had no bug problems and I had a nice, gentle breeze that should keep them to a minimum and if they got too bad I could don and sleep in my bug jacket.
I had something to eat and slowly re-arranged the boat to accommodate my air mattress and sleeping bag. The boat was still covered in leaves and branches so this was a good time to toss all that overboard and very carefully look for leftover insects and reptilians. I was relieved to find none of either.
I then wiped down the sleeping area with several of the blue-paper shop towels I’ve learned are great to have along when boating. In the wonderful light of the half-moon I blew up my air mattress and made up my bed. Thinking I was still too keyed-up to sleep, I thought I’d just lie down a bit once that was done. And then a surprising thing happened—I started falling asleep.
At that point a couple of strange things happened. I felt completely safe and secure out there. But as I drifted off, I’d get sudden little urges. I thought I had a couple of mosquitoes around my face and got up and put on my mosquito jacket only to realize there weren’t any mosquitoes. I felt something on my leg and thought, ‘Oh, I forgot to check myself for ticks’ and did so. The the VERY strange one. As I sat up and turned over to get to my knees, out of the corner of my eye I saw a big spider— a tarantula-size one—crawling on my right shoulder. I brushed at it and stood up quickly but already knew it wasn’t real. It was an hallucination. I say this because the spider was like an black outline of a spider. But it had no mass. When I brushed at it I felt nothing, I found nothing on the bed where it would have had to have fallen. And my mind knew it wasn’t real. I didn’t obsessively keep looking for it because I knew it hadn’t been real. I’m not sure how to explain this but my mind saw that it had been two-dimensional rather than three-dimensional—like a cut-out, a figment of my imagination.
After about an hour, my little itches and urges stopped and I fell lightly asleep. I soon woke, enjoying the moon. It was so bright I wondered whether I might get a moon-burn. Yet I could clearly see Orion above me to the south and the Big Dipper to the north.
I woke several times during the night. I was indeed getting some serious dew but it wasn’t really a problem—I’d just have to dry stuff in the morning.
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Thursday, 13 March-
Today was a ‘down’ day, just prepping for the next couple of days. I drove to Marco Island and found a nice little park to spend a few hours relaxing and planning. I’ve been trying to figure out how to reserve a backcountry campsite in the Everglades. The problem is knowing how fast I can navigate out there. Also, given it’s buggy out there, I’d want to stay on chickees rather than ground sites and even then I’d want the ones most exposed to a breeze. Some chickees are built right at the edge of a mangrove island and suffer from the bugs. After searching my options for an hour or so I wasn’t happy. But then I had an idea. If I had a solo backpacking tent, I think I could set it up on the boat. I’d have to shift around my extra gas cans and water can but that might work. I thought I’d test for length by using my two-person backpacking tent as a sample. And the closer I looked the more I realized I might just be able to use that one. I set it up in the parking lot and tried it. It’s just a bit too big but it’s a free-standing tent and I found I could just bend the bows a little more and it would fit. If it were windy I’d have to rig some tie-downs but that would be easy (assuming I could get the tent assembled at all). And that changed everything. I wouldn’t need to get (or pay $10 a night for) permits and I could anchor well away from the mangroves, hopefully in a breeze.
I spent the rest of the day finalizing preparations for leaving on my trip tomorrow. I bought two more gas cans so that gives me a total of 29 gallons of gas and an easy way to manage it. I’ll use the ‘thirds’ rule--- one-third of my gas for going out, one-third for coming back, and one-third in reserve. I’m planning to use about 1 gallon of gas per hour but the thirds rule should keep me from doing something stupid.
By the end of the day I had gone over the checkoff lists provided by the park service and in a guide book and felt ready.
That evening I picked up a pizza and ate half and saved the rest for the trip. I then called Labashi and went over the planning for the float plan before returning to my campsite at Collier-Seminole. I used Collier-Seminole so I could charge up the boat and camera batteries. I also wanted to charge the cell phone but I’ve apparently lost it. I called Labashi and had her send a text message to the cell phone, offering a reward, but I don’t imagine there’s a real good chance of getting it back. The cell phone isn’t a big deal for my little boat trip since there’s no reception in the backcountry anyway but not having it available is going to be a pain.
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Wednesday, 12 March-
Today had less chance of rain and begged to be a geocaching-by-boat day. I launched at Port of Call marina ($10) by 1000 and headed down the Faka-Union Canal. The chug down the canal seems a long one. It’s a manatee zone and the first part is ‘Idle Speed Only’ and then a couple of miles of ‘Minimal Wake’ zone. It’s the better part of an hour before you can open the throttle.
I had decided to go to Camp Lulu, which has a geocache. I used that geocache as my Go-To waypoint. Ah, much better—the GPS now gives me course, speed, and distance rather than just recalculating. I ran aground fairly hard just north of Lulu Key but got off without damage (though the skeg on the outboard has a little less paint now).
As I approached the area of the geocache I saw there was a large group of canoeists camped in that general area so I landed around the turn at an area with deeper water close in. Some Florida good-ole-boys were camped there and they seemed to take quite an interest in me as I approached. It turned out they thought I was a ranger coming to kick them out of the campsite. They thought they might be across the line for the Everglades National Park, which requires permits for all campsites. But I showed them the line on the chart and we were good buddies now so they offered me some fried chicken.
I demurred on the chicken, explaining I had something to do and headed off. As I followed the GPS I realized the geocache had to be somewhere right behind the large group of campers. But as I passed by most of them were under a large tent eating lunch so I waved hello in passing, then cut behind. I found the geocache without much trouble and dropped off two geocoins I’ve had since last August. Labashi and I picked up ‘Northern Trekker’ and ‘RocketBear’ in Churchill, Manitoba and I thought they should go somewhere special and Lulu Key seemed like a good place.
Coming out from the find, I began talking with one of the kids and soon learned they are from Penn State, down on a Spring Break backcountry outing. They canoed down the Blackwater River from Collier-Seminole Park and are headed for Chokoloskee. As we talked more I met the leader, who, after hearing I live near Harrisburg, PA said “I do too!” and it turned out he was from Grantham, about a half-hour from my home.
One kid was from York, another’s parents work at the same place I had worked. Small world, indeed.
I then navigated my way off the marked channel toward Fakahatchee Island and its micro geocache. I noticed the GPS did not seem to be reacting correctly—sometimes Fakahatchee Island would be on my left, sometimes on my right—not a good thing when you are depending on the GPS to keep you ‘found’. I made several waypoints to find my way back if I needed to and continued on, eventually figuring out the Island I wanted was the one of the right. I landed at the designated spot and almost immediately was greeted by swamp-angels (mosquitoes). That’s when I realized I had left the bug-spray in my other pack. But these guys weren’t horrible. Six or seven of them would swarm around for a few minutes and I’d kill a few then they’d seem to disappear. But if I moved to another spot, I’d get another greeting visit.
I worked my way to the geocache and found it after a few minutes of looking. This one is a film canister covered in camo tape, containing nothing but a log book. I signed in and moved on.
Around the corner was a very small grown-over old cemetery, the stones peeking out from under the heavy growth. Several stones appeared to be home-made from concrete. All seemed to have dates of death in the Forties. I’d like to have seen what this island looked like back then.
I didn’t delay in getting back to the boat and launching. And as soon as away from the mangroves, there were no bugs. I had lunch just drifting along there and decided to try navigating across Fakahatchee Bay to a tiny little passage way which would give me a shortcut to the Faka-Union Canal—but there were many 1 and 2-foot depth readings along the way.
It was at this point that I noticed my two compasses weren’t matching at all—they were at best 30-degrees different. And that’s when I learned the GPS is using its internal compass for a heading and that depends on the unit to be horizontal. Just tilting down the unit changed the heading by 30 degrees. So I spent the rest of the trip playing and testing and eventually found the GPS by default switches to the magnetic compass when you slow to under 10 miles per hour. And if the unit is tilted it doesn’t indicate accurately. This combination of things is why the display was acting up earlier. As I came up the due-North-lying Faka-Union canal, I saw the icon for my position actually move in reverse. The direction I was going was north but the GPS map said I was going south. No wonder I was confused earlier!
I made a setting change to tell the GPS to use the GPS compass unless my speed dropped under one mile per hour, THEN switch to the magnetic compass. I’ll have to keep an eye on this. I want the magnetic compass when walking or not moving but the GPS compass when moving in the boat.
I returned to the van about 1730 and took advantage of the wash-down hoses to clean both boat and motor. Then I drove to the library to log my finds on geocaching.com and I talked with Labashi for an hour before updating the blog and returning to the Wal-mart for the night.
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Tuesday, 11 March-
Today was one of those ‘in-between’ days. I have been vexed by an odd occurrence with the new GPS. If I do a ‘Go-To’ on land, the GPS calculates a route and leads me there. But when I tried it on the water yesterday, the GPS just kept going into Calculating mode time and again until I finally had to turn it off by pressing the off button and holding it down for a long time. So the plan today was to drive in to the library for a wi-fi connection and call Garmin about it.
I expected the call to Garmin to be a matter of waiting out a 15 or 20 minute wait for a technician so while waiting I read through all the support info I could find. One solution gave me a hint as to what was going on. When I first started using the GPS to take me to something it would ask “Follow Road? Off-Road? Quit asking?” and after a few times of always selecting the “Follow Road” option I selected the ‘Quit asking” option. So I was in effect telling it to find a route between two points on the water by following a road. No wonder it was mixed up!
Technician Cecil came on the line in about ten minutes and confirmed what I had found and told me how to turn the prompting back on. I had foolishly thought of ‘Off-Road’ as “via dirt roads” and hadn’t considered the marine environment.
The 60CSx is also interesting regarding layering of multiple maps. When I first loaded up the marine charts, I had already loaded up the ‘City Navigator’ maps and the unit has its own set of ‘basemaps’. I had picked up a one-liner of info somewhere that said the 60CSx doesn’t have transparency of maps… if you have more than one set of maps you may not be able to see the other. I found that before I go out on the water, I have to turn off the land maps for south Florida so they don’t interfere with the marine charts for south Florida. But I was doing it by laboriously scrolling down through all the states to get to Florida to turn it off and on. Cecil showed me a way to hide the entire map set in one click and also recommended I turn off (“hide”) the basemap when using the marine charts. Now it’s much easier to switch back and forth.
After messing about in the library, I drove to the Port of Call marina, thinking I’d launch there. But by the time I got there it was getting a little late in the day and we had a 70-per-cent chance of rain in the forecast so I just chatted with the marina guy, a nice kid from Minnesota, and put the trip off until tomorrow. So instead I drove to the nearby Big Cypress Bend boardwalk and walked out through the Fakahatchee—this time with dry feet. I saw a half-dozen gators, a raccoon, and an eagle but it was a little too crowded with tourists.
After that I drove back to Marco Island and launched the kayak in the little marine park. I paddled out to the Gulf to play in the waves a bit, then turned up along a wildlife refuge, marveling at all the shorebirds flying about in flocks of hundreds of birds at a time.
I then paddled back around the inside of the refuge a bit but the tidal current was against me so I called it a day after only an hour-and-a-half of paddling. But it surely was pleasant out there—70-ish temps, setting sun, a light breeze--- pretty nice duty.
After loading up the gear I used the GPS to find a local park and hung out there while eating supper. I had gotten an up-scale pizza for dinner last night and that had been not only supper for last night but also breakfast and lunch for today. At the park I realized what the extras were—they had included a half-loaf of bread plus little containers of olive oil, peppers, and parmesan cheese— perfect for making up an olive-oil sauce for dipping the bread. That was a fantastic treat.
I then headed home to the Wal-mart and read and did some crossword puzzles.
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posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 22:53
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