Welcome Visitor! Please take a few seconds and bilbo
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2016
- Messages
- 791
- Reaction score
- 922
- Points
- 93
- Location
- South Florida
- Vehicle Year
- 1983
- Make / Model
- Ford
- Engine Type
- 2.3 (4 Cylinder)
- Engine Size
- 2.3L
- Transmission
- Manual
- 2WD / 4WD
- 2WD
- Total Lift
- 0
- Total Drop
- 0
In my boat, so technically off-road My son and I took a day trip to the Ten-Thousand Islands, a bunch of tiny little mangrove islands in SW Florida. It's really a cool place that's only accessible by boat and very easy to get lost in as everything starts too look the same. The area is quite shallow and the sand is constantly moving around with tides and storms. A small boat like a kayak/canoe or Gheenoe would be the ticket for exploring this area. My boat draws about a foot so we can get into just about anywhere, just not quickly.
We arrived at the Goodland Boat Park at about 10AM and paid our fees to launch there. It's $10 to launch a motorboat and $5 to launch a non-motorized boat. Half an hour or so later we had the boat rigged and loaded, and launched it. The ramp facilities are very nice, with staging docks on either side of the ramp. It wasn't busy, but there were a few commercial charters operating there. After parking the truck and coming back, we found one of them loading his clients on little mini pontoon things. I think we took his spot with our boat, but there was nobody around when we tied it up there, whatever. There were little brown jellyfish all over the place near the dock. We untied and were off.
The wind was pretty weak in the morning, and blowing straight into the pass we needed to take to get into the Gulf. Especially being high tide, it was plenty wide to accommodate a few tacks and we made it out into the Gulf, then headed Southeast to explore the islands. after a few miles looking we spotted a little piece of white in all the green mangrove forest and decided to check it out. It was a small beach, about 40 yards wide, on an island called Turtle Key. We had the whole place to ourselves. I saw two boats go by in the 3 hours we were there. There wasn't much exploring to do on the island as the vegetation was so thick, but lots of cool stuff on the beach. Thousands of seashells, and little crabs skittering around on the sand. n found a tiny hermit crab occupying a shell no bigger than a pencil eraser.
We basked in the seclusion for a few hours until the sea breeze had kicked up and we decided to take off and explore some more. We headed a little further south to "Gullivan Key," which had a nice long sandbar that allowed me to beach the boat with protection from the surf. There were some tidal flats nearby and we found a little fiddler crab there.
There were fish jumping all over the place in the shallow water. One of these days I need to get a couple of poles rigged up with saltwater gear to fish these areas. Apparently 10K islands has very good fishing. We walked around the island for a bit and then decided to head for home as I had to work the next day. At that point we were about 3/4 of the way to low tide. While FL doesn't have huge tidal ranges, the shallowness and flows between islands creates sandbars all over the place. I had to sail most of the way back with the centerboard up, which means lots of leeway and frustration. I cheated and used the motor with the sails and we were able to make great speed into the wind in spite of the lack of centerboard. Looking back, I should have headed West into the deeper waters of the Gulf before going North toward the channel that is Coon Key Pass. Lessons learned. Heading in through the pass we thought we saw some flamingoes but after looking it up they were probably Roseate Spoonbills. Cool nonetheless, and a first sighting of those birds for us. The second and third pics are stock photo of what they look like. They use their spoon shaped bill to dig in the mud for food.
We arrived back at the ramp at about 6:30PM. The un-launching was mostly uneventful except for my completely eating it on on the exposed sludge all over the ramp. My feet completely went out from under me in an instant and I went down hard. A couple of bruises but so far that's all. We are planning a trip back later in the year to camp on the islands and explore some more. They are closed to camping during the spring and summer to accommodate nesting birds but otherwise it's free dispersed camping. I can't wait for that, it should be awesome beach camping in that solitude.
We arrived at the Goodland Boat Park at about 10AM and paid our fees to launch there. It's $10 to launch a motorboat and $5 to launch a non-motorized boat. Half an hour or so later we had the boat rigged and loaded, and launched it. The ramp facilities are very nice, with staging docks on either side of the ramp. It wasn't busy, but there were a few commercial charters operating there. After parking the truck and coming back, we found one of them loading his clients on little mini pontoon things. I think we took his spot with our boat, but there was nobody around when we tied it up there, whatever. There were little brown jellyfish all over the place near the dock. We untied and were off.
The wind was pretty weak in the morning, and blowing straight into the pass we needed to take to get into the Gulf. Especially being high tide, it was plenty wide to accommodate a few tacks and we made it out into the Gulf, then headed Southeast to explore the islands. after a few miles looking we spotted a little piece of white in all the green mangrove forest and decided to check it out. It was a small beach, about 40 yards wide, on an island called Turtle Key. We had the whole place to ourselves. I saw two boats go by in the 3 hours we were there. There wasn't much exploring to do on the island as the vegetation was so thick, but lots of cool stuff on the beach. Thousands of seashells, and little crabs skittering around on the sand. n found a tiny hermit crab occupying a shell no bigger than a pencil eraser.
We basked in the seclusion for a few hours until the sea breeze had kicked up and we decided to take off and explore some more. We headed a little further south to "Gullivan Key," which had a nice long sandbar that allowed me to beach the boat with protection from the surf. There were some tidal flats nearby and we found a little fiddler crab there.
There were fish jumping all over the place in the shallow water. One of these days I need to get a couple of poles rigged up with saltwater gear to fish these areas. Apparently 10K islands has very good fishing. We walked around the island for a bit and then decided to head for home as I had to work the next day. At that point we were about 3/4 of the way to low tide. While FL doesn't have huge tidal ranges, the shallowness and flows between islands creates sandbars all over the place. I had to sail most of the way back with the centerboard up, which means lots of leeway and frustration. I cheated and used the motor with the sails and we were able to make great speed into the wind in spite of the lack of centerboard. Looking back, I should have headed West into the deeper waters of the Gulf before going North toward the channel that is Coon Key Pass. Lessons learned. Heading in through the pass we thought we saw some flamingoes but after looking it up they were probably Roseate Spoonbills. Cool nonetheless, and a first sighting of those birds for us. The second and third pics are stock photo of what they look like. They use their spoon shaped bill to dig in the mud for food.
We arrived back at the ramp at about 6:30PM. The un-launching was mostly uneventful except for my completely eating it on on the exposed sludge all over the ramp. My feet completely went out from under me in an instant and I went down hard. A couple of bruises but so far that's all. We are planning a trip back later in the year to camp on the islands and explore some more. They are closed to camping during the spring and summer to accommodate nesting birds but otherwise it's free dispersed camping. I can't wait for that, it should be awesome beach camping in that solitude.
