Kayaking from the Resort (Florida Boating, Post 17)

Monday, February 8

On Monday we went kayaking. The water is beautiful! I took dozens of photos. It’s extremely shallow, so the water varies in color from place to place, depending on what’s down below.

Lol, I could not seem to take enough pictures of the water! Instead of paddling, I was just leaned over hoping to not drop my phone (or my paddle) in the water. We have floaters on our paddles for just such an occurrence (see blue thing in picture above), but in this case the water is only a couple of feet deep.

On our way back we came upon a couple of women and their small child enjoying the water next to the cement ruins of an old dock, in front of a recently-rebuilt house. They pointed out something large and white floating in the water and asked us what it was. It was too far out for them to reach it and they had become mesmerized by it! What in the world was it?!?

We paddled out to investigate. As we got closer, it looked like a floating duffle bag. Maybe a canvas bag full of lifejackets or other lightweight boating equipment? Then we thought it was an errant boat cushion. Turns out it was a marine beanbag, in pristine condition. I have never heard of such a thing, but the tag said “marine beanbag” right on it, so that’s how we knew! It must have blown off of a large, fancy yacht. Boats the size of ours have no room for marine beanbags, lol!

We towed the beanbag back to the women and it was the perfect size for their kid. I didn’t think to take a photo until we were too far away, but you can imagine, a couple of happy women standing chest-deep in the water, with their little child floating on a big fancy white marine beanbag 🙂

We spent the afternoon discussing our route. We are just north of the highway on Little Torch Key. The numbers in the water on the chart indicate depth, in feet.

Most decent sized boats need several feet of water at least. We have a retractable keel, and when it’s pulled up, we only draft 8 inches (would run aground in less than 8 inches). We need more than that to actually sail, because we need the keel down to keep the boat from heeling over too far under sail (to balance the pressure of the wind in the sail), but we can motor along slowly in a foot of water with the sails down.

The “correct” thing to do from where we are docked at the resort is to lower our mast and motor south, under the highway bridge, and then raise our mast and sail southwest and then south to the deep waters south of the highway, where all the rest of the boats go.

What John wants to do instead is go north, where no one except a few kayakers go. We run the risk of running aground. Look at those shallow depths! One foot, two foot, three foot, or yikes, only half a foot! That’s where we run aground, at half a foot. Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned. We can’t really sail up there because there’s no room for the keel, and even if we stick to the narrow channels, we don’t have enough sideways room to tack. John just wants to motor out a few miles and anchor, and use the sailboat as home base (like a mini houseboat) while we spend our days kayaking around. I think he’s more of a kayaker and fisherman than a sailor.

Well, I can’t talk, I’m not particularly interested in the sailing part of sailing either. Although I much prefer riding under sail than motoring. Outboard motors are obnoxiously loud and spew fumes and chew through the gas at a wasteful and alarming rate. Also while motoring you catch a lot of wind in your face and you beat across the waves. Sailing is so much more civilized. You are going with the wind, so you don’t feel it. The boat glides silently along. It’s very graceful and relaxing, as long as you don’t mind being heeled over (the boat does not sail level, it lists sideways against the push on the sail; that’s normal and to be expected).

In my opinion, we should have launched the boat from the state park on Bahia Honda Key (middle-bottom of this photo), and sailed north into this area that has somewhat better depth, so we could actually sail around without running aground (but it’s still remote with no one out there).

However, it turns out I would have been wrong! Turns out it’s a good damn thing we had the boat in a slip, handy by our resort for a couple of days rather than trying to launch it immediately from a state park and sailing off. More about that next post!

Here’s a couple of evening pictures John took while I was inside coaching my clients (via phone). I know I don’t have to coach while on vacation but we’re going to be gone a month and I didn’t want to drop all my clients. I just have a few of them and I’ve scheduled them for evenings while we’re at the resort, so it doesn’t interfere with our daytime activities. Being in eastern time zone helps. I typically schedule my clients, who are from all different time zones, for the end of the afternoons in mountain time, so their sessions automatically became early evening sessions. I’m only coaching Monday and Tuesday evening this week.

Ok, here’s John’s pictures. Yep, yikes, a snake. Nope, I don’t know what kind. I only know southwest desert snakes.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com