But not enough to float a boat. Creatures, tides and weather must be navigated to find camp (Second of two parts).
By TERRY TOMALIN
Published April 14, 2004
[Times photos: Scott Keeler]
From left to right, Jason Lusk, Terry Tomalin and Luke Sherman cozy up to a campfire at their second campsite, at Picnic Key in the Everglades.
Terry Tomalin gathers driftwood for a fire at Picnic Key. Campers may use any dead wood for a fire, but nothing alive may be cut. The campsite was Plan B after park rangers told the group it could not camp at Indian Key, and falling tides left the boat on shore.
An endangered plant, Tillandsia fasciculata, a native Florida bromeliad, blooms on a log along the Broad River.
Another group of campers, complete with a tent on their bow, try fishing along a sand bar outside the mouth of the Broad River.
RODGERS RIVER BAY - During the night a spring tide brought the water to within a few inches of the wood platform that supported our tent.
"Did you hear something banging around the chickee last night," Luke Sherman asked.
"It was nothing," I said. "Just an alligator."
The reptile, an 8-footer that had obviously gotten used to being fed by campers, had thumped the pilings during the night and unnerved my nephew, who was visiting from Boston.
Alligators are part of the backcountry experience in Everglades National Park and must be given wide berth, especially during the warmer months when they are most active.
The high water, the result of a nearly full moon, was a welcome sight. Our 21-foot powerboat could use the extra clearance as we tried to make our way across the sand bars and mud flats that caused us so much trouble the previous day.
Even with nautical charts and a global positioning system receiver, we found navigation difficult in this maze of mangrove islands. Most people picture the Everglades as a huge expanse of wet prairie, or A River of Grass, as conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas described it.
But here on the Wilderness Waterway, a 99-mile inland route that stretches from Everglades City to Flamingo, there was nothing but mangroves and oyster bars as far as the eye could see.
"I think we have timed it just right," I told my friends as we cruised down the 12-foot-deep Broad River. "It should be high tide when we reach open water."
We planned to spend the evening at a beach campsite on Rabbit Key. The National Weather Service, however, called for 25-knot winds out of the north, so we thought we should try to run the 30 to 40 miles across the Gulf of Mexico before the seas kicked up. Our earlier plans of traveling to Flamingo, far to the south, were blown away by the wind and waves.
But when we got to the mouth of the river, we realized the tide tables were off.
"The water is a lot lower than it was yesterday when we passed through here," my friend Jason Lusk, a Times copy editor, said as we suddenly found ourselves at a standstill after idling into 18 inches of water, which was so muddy it was impossible to see the bottom on our way out the river mouth.
"The wind must have kept the tide from turning," I told my three companions. "Looks like we are going to have to get out and push."
My nephew thought I was joking. "You're kidding, right?" he said. "What about the gators?"
"Just get in the water," I said.
I checked the chart one more time. It said there should be 2 to 4 feet of water. Then I noticed a small navigational note in the margin: "Last surveyed in 1961 ... "
Slipping over the side, I immediately sunk up to my waist in the mud. I tried to move my feet and lost both sandals.
"Come on in guys," I said. "The water's nice."
We struggled for two minutes to free the boat, but we were at a loss as to which path between the islands would set us free. We likely were near the channel and freedom, but it was impossible to tell exactly were that deeper water might be.
Then Luke noticed a fin slicing through the water 100 yards away.
"See where that dolphin goes," I said. "It will lead us to deep water."
We watched the dolphin as it fed in the shallows, then it headed off between two mangrove islands.
We are modern men with space-age navigational equipment, I thought to myself, but we still need an animal to lead us home.
Proceeding slowly out the river mouth, we found the channel and were on our way north.
But the wind had turned a 1-foot ripple into a 3-foot chop, complete with whitecaps, close to the islands. Halfway to Rabbit Key, one hard bounce knocked out the screen that showed the depth, so we stopped to reassess the situation and study the charts.
"I would hate to get stranded in there at low tide," I said, pointing to the shallow water around Rabbit Key. "Maybe we should find a new campsite."
Our chart showed a campsite on Indian Key, the small island at the mouth of the pass that led to Chokoloskee. An hour later, after reconnecting the wires to the GPS and depth sounder, we made landfall on a sandy beach and called the National Park Service to request permission to change our campsite and stay at Indian Key.
"That is fine with us," the ranger said. "But there is no camping allowed on Indian Key."
"But the chart says ... " I pleaded.
"The map is wrong," the ranger said.
So we piled back into the boat and headed out the pass and into the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The main campsite on Picnic Key, a few minutes to the north of Indian Key, was located on a gulf beach. But we bypassed it and continued up a deep, narrow pass that separated the island from Tiger Key, vowing never again to get stranded in shallow water.
We anchored the boat on a small beach on Picnic Key, but the swift current pushed it almost parallel to the beach.
"Do you have a second anchor to secure the stern of the boat?" asked a ranger who came to check on us just before dark.
We didn't, and we spent the next few hours trying to keep the 21-foot boat from beaching itself.
"Oh well ... the tide will come in sooner or later," I said, admitting defeat.
The next morning the boat rested on dry sand, several feet from the water's edge. I checked the tide chart, which called for high water.
"I don't know, but this looks like low tide to me," my nephew said.
We watched the water for 10 minutes but couldn't tell if the tide was coming in or going out. So I placed a stick next to the propellor to mark the water height.
"The tide is dropping," I said. "If we don't move this boat now, we will be here all night."
Moving a 2,500-pound boat off a sandbar is no easy task. With the water level dropping by the minute, we ended a brief discussion of fulcrums and physics by agreeing to try to spin the boat.
"If we can get the bow in the water," Lusk suggested, "it should relieve the weight on the stern."
After a few minutes of pushing and grunting, the boat moved an inch, then a foot. Soon it was floating again, and we were on our way home.
"That was close," I said. "I think next time I'll stick to canoes."
