Dear Reader,
Today was a gorgeous day of paddling!
When I awoke in the night, the marsh was alive with the chattering ruckus of seabirds! I had never heard such a midnight chorus of seabirds before. Who was carrying on and why? Surely it wasn’t a way to stay warm?
The morning’s low temperature of 39 was five degrees warmer than it has been recently, and thus felt downright balmy.
And when daylight arrived the seas lay flat. Such a glorious site!
Blue above and blue below, with just a smudgy pencil line of land in the horizon.
We paddled back out the St. Mark’s River’s entrance, following the deep channel markers to stay off the oyster beds and headed around the point and St. Mark’s lighthouse.
We remained, nonetheless, in the shallows since the shallows extended for miles out from land. But the green grasslands below us made for great viewing as we glided by.
Today’s 7.8 nm paddle to Ring Dike camp, also in St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge, was entirely above shallows with infrequent deeper channels disbursed about. And where there was land visible, it consisted of marshes in the foreground and trees in the distance. Which made finding the channel we had to go up to get to our camp tricky.
Where exactly do we cut into the marsh? John studied his marine chart (which is in nautical miles and thus why we use nautical miles instead of statute miles like you see written at the top of the Google Earth maps I carry on my boat and which I take pictures of for you so you can see our route) and his GPS. Plus the incredible bird’s eye map John has in his head.
And following the deeper channels as we worked our way deeper and deeper into the marsh, John found our camp.
Upon a man-made dike, in the midst of the wetlands.
And just as we landed, here came today’s missing wind! Unbelievable! Today, luck was on our side, wind-wise! Because I can only imagine the bugs if we had no wind.
We used the tent as our wind break and had all afternoon to fiddle about camp, tinkering with the finicky stove that now needs to be replaced and generally reorganizing gear.
Tomorrow we start Segment 6 of our journey. It’s the much-anticipated, remote, long stretch that curves south away from Florida’s panhandle, The Big Bend.
Rainy weather, with the threat of thunderstorms, is moving in. And tomorrow the forecast is wind. And temps maybe as high as 80!
But today’s paddle was the creme de la creme! And I arrived at camp without collapsing. It was a good day!
We are alive.
We are healthy.
We are adventurers.
Goodnight!
Cheers, Susana