It Was Not An Auspicious Beginning

 

It was not an auspicious beginning. 

 

After driving south for 2 days from Cleveland, and arriving at Tarpon Springs on the west coast of Florida, I was full of optimism. I had a week at my disposal and a plan of how to use it.

 

The launch ramp area was clearly meant for trailered boats, with long parking spaces specifically designated for them. I, on the other hand, had car-topped my sailing canoe and didn't belong in those spaces. Then I noticed a peculiar sign: '7 days parking for guests of boaters'. And who was to know whether I was guest or boater? Or both? I parked there.

 

It had taken me several hours to get my gear stowed in the sailing canoe, as I struggled to fit 7 gallons of fresh water aboard. In mid afternoon I set sail for Anclote Key, a barrier island some 4 miles west of my launch. 

 

I landed at Anclote in time to set up camp and enjoy dinner and a hazy sunset, soon overtaken by clouds. 

 

Clouds? I checked the forecast. A storm front was sweeping eastward across the southern states, expecting to hit the Gulf Coast of Florida in the wee hours of the morning. As it transpired, Anclote's beach made for a good place to camp and wait out the next day's storm.

 

And so, instead of lazily sailing to the horizon, I was holed up on that sand beach, confined to my little 1-1/2 man tent for 24 hours in continuous heavy rain. In those 24 hours I only managed to get outside for 15 minutes during a rare lull in the storm. I kept a large jar of peanut butter and some flat bread handy under my tent fly, as well as a water bottle and a pee bottle. I needed them all.

 

Late February after a knee replacement and a colder than expected winter in Cleveland, I was eager to see a part of the Florida coast I'd overlooked. And take my solo sailing canoe, Chicken of the Sea, along for the ride.

 

Browsing Google maps and the heavily developed west coast of Florida, I didn't expect to see anything that resembled a week-long sailing opportunity. At least not my kind, a camping trip from island to island.

 

West of the developed cities of Tarpon Springs, Dunedin and Clearwater, were the large barrier islands: Honeymoon Beach, Caledesi Island and Anclote Key. State parks all. Day use parks. And except for one spot on the north end of Anclote Key, camping was forbidden.

 

But, as I looked at the map in more detail, I saw these funny looking little dots in the bays between the mainland and the barrier islands, all lined up in a row and roughly equidistant from each other.

 

Nature provides for large barrier islands, but not for tiny islands neatly arrayed in a row. I looked on satellite view. These were islands with greenery and small sand beaches. Maybe 20 of them in all; more than half with what appeared to be good beach landings. And flat ground to camp above the beaches.

 

They were very small, perhaps, 1/4 to 1/3 of an acre. A modest suburban plot. But they were uninhabited, mostly unnamed and occasionally visited for picnics by passing motorboats, as I could see from the satellite view. I could make out the color of the boat's shade canopies, what appeared to be an outrigger canoe and even the beach umbrellas erected by picnickers. You can see this yourself on Google satellite view at its most detailed photo resolution. 

 

There was no information about these islands online. I guessed they were spoil banks, dredgings deposited a long time ago and now grown over with vegetation. And beaches. There is nothing on the islands, including fresh water. I guessed that no one really controlled them. They were mine for the taking. My home for the week. I decided to make the trip and hope for the best.

 

The morning after the storm I awoke to lots of very wet equipment. I hung clothes, towel and my lifejacket on handy bushes to dry in the stiff breeze.

 

Departing mid-morning, I headed out from the protected cove on Anclote Key into a 15 knot downwind breeze from the north west, with all of my 53 sq. ft. sail up. It was a little too much. I reached for my lifejacket...MY LIFEJACKET! I left it to dry back on the beach, and forgot to take it. My 15 minute downwind sail cost me an hour of tough upwind work to reverse. Back to Anclote Key. 

 

With lifejacket and gear in hand, I decided to put a reef in the sail, as well as use my little hand pump to top off my outrigger's inflatable amas. They'd get a hard workout keeping me upright in the open waters ahead.

 

The reefed sail proved the right choice. At 41 sq. ft. of sail area, the boat was moving at perhaps 5 knots, going south at speed. After sailing 4 miles south to clear the southern tip of Anclote Key, there was a gap of some 3 - 4 miles before the next barrier island, the oddly named 3 Rooker Key.

 

With the unobstructed northwest wind pouring through this gap, 2-1/2' waves from the open Gulf of Mexico??(...America?...Canada?....) pushed the canoe from astern. Accelerating on the suge from the waves, we began outrunning them at 6+ knots, the canoe trying to bury its bow in the next wave ahead. I shifted my seat a bit further back and relocated most of the gallon water jugs behind me. It worked, the bow stayed up and I never took solid water aboard.

 

My original plan was to leave Anclote Key and spend most of the week moseying my way south, camping and exploring the little islands, before returning north to my start. But this wind had other ideas, so I just kept flying along, reaching my end point for the trip, a little island just south of the Bellaire bridge, some 25 miles from Anclote Key, in about 4-1/2 hours. I spent the next 5 days moseying my way back, mostly against a gentler version of that northwest wind.

 

Over the course of the return trip, I camped on 3 of the little islands, which offered easy landing beaches, level ground for camping and a reasonable degree of privacy. No one came to challenge my presence, no one bothered me, no one came near except for a few older teens, who, after anchoring their motorboat, waded ashore some distance from me and appeared to make a cooking fire for some fish they had caught. And then they left.

 

My little wide burner stove, which uses butane canisters, did a fine job of heating water for breakfast, and gently boiling the Amish soup mixes I had brought for dinner, one of the only commercial soup mixes I could find that came with little salt. I only had the water I brought along with me to drink and it wouldn't have done me well to develop a fierce thirst from too much salt.

 

Having finished one butane canister, I screwed another one into the stove and...and...nothing. A faulty canister. With 3 days left in the trip. This is where the emergency peanut butter and flatbread rations came in handy for the second time. I'm not much of a fan of peanut butter. After 3 days of it, my dislike approached loathing.

 

By the end of the week I had explored the dazzling white sand beaches of Honeymoon Island and 3 Rooker Key, camped out on one of Honeymoon's beaches and watching a stunning sunset the night that Jupiter, Mercury, Venus & Mars were supposed to be visible to the naked eye on the western horizon. I fell asleep instead.

 

By the following Saturday, I was back at my first campsite on Anclote Key, and, the next morning, an hour's sail in brisk winds brought me back to my Tarpon Springs launch ramp.

 

It was a lovely way to spend a winter week. And it was especially gratifying that a casual glance at an online map would show these little dots and that these little dots would reveal themselves as stepping stones to fine adventure.