The Barrier Islands of Western Florida
February 6, 2024
Leaving Crystal River proved challenging. The morning of my departure began with a dense fog advisory issued until 1000 hrs and an extremely low but rising tide. One boat left early and I delayed until 0900 hrs. It was a tricky river run and at Shell Island, the water was flowing fast at just 2.5’ deep, my minimum draft. These were grip-the-wheel-tight and hold-your-breath moments, flashing your eyes on the shallows in front and beside you and the chart to stay on course. The next challenge was the narrow, marked channel which showed 3’ deep repeatedly and emerging oyster beds along the edge. It got scarier exiting the marked channel because the next 9 NM varied from 3’ to 6’ deep with no markers. Loon-a-Sea had texted earlier warning that they got hung up on one of these shoals and fortunately, they broke free when waked by a boat passing close. Waking happens when a boat passes close creating 2-3’ high, short-set waves wreaking havoc inside a boat that can’t get turned into the waves – a lesson learned the hard way. Big boats make big wakes and in Florida, bigger is apparently better, and waking is an unpleasant, normal behaviour.
The next challenge were the crab pots that appeared immediately outside the marked channel and persisted for the next 45 NM. These are approximately 100 m lines of 20 or so pots marked by difficult-to-see, tiny buoys that are often blackened and masked by weathering and alga. They occur in waters up to 36’ deep, or everywhere I travel along this coast. There can be one or multiple lines, laid out parallel to the shore, or not. WW’s helm is near to the water line making these targets very difficult to detect beyond 75 m in good visibility. At issue are their lines which can get entangled in your propeller and rudder. In my opinion, these are hazards to navigation and therefore illegal, but crabbing and lobstering will persist from here back to New Brunswick. I do my best to avoid them and change my underwear regularly.
I mentioned the fog warning and it was out there as I entered the Gulf. I was following a southern track 15 NM offshore, and a very dense, spooky fog bank lurked within 5 NM off my starboard for about 2 hours. I was very happy for the sunshine and calm waters finally gracing my travels though. So, despite the tense exit from the river to the Gulf, crab pots, and a parallelling fog bank, this 3-hour run down to Anclote Keys was the best day on the Gulf so far.
Anclote Key is the northernmost barrier island of western Florida. I spent a pleasant night there once I found an anchor swing that missed the never-ending crab pots. The pots are like annoying body pimples, popping up unpredictably everywhere you don’t want them. The key looked beautiful and ripe for exploring, but I had a human schedule to follow which was bringing me a new crew at Clearwater Beach. When I awoke, WW had unsurprisingly swung almost 180o which put an unseen crab pot just off my stern in 4’ of water because of the low tide. I maneuvered out of the anchorage following my chart plotter’s breadcrumb trail. All of WW’s paths are recorded and displayed on the chart plotter. The “breadcrumb trail“ comes from the Brothers Grimm, but the tactic used by Hansel and Gretel to find their way home failed because birds ate the bread. Computers don’t eat bread, thus this descriptor of digital tracks persists; I digress. I was going to take the pass between Anclote Key and Three Rooker Bar into the Gulf proper until I saw the exposed bars on this low tide. That put me on the first of my runs in the Atlantic Inter-Coastal Waterway (AICW). In another random moment, I also caught up with the Calle-B headed south. The northern keys we passed looked enticing with their white, powder-sand beaches and sand bars. We didn’t get much time to enjoy the view though because the onslaught of powerboats had begun slowing us to 8 knots. The AICW is narrow with lots of shoaling outside the marked channel, a.k.a., knee-deep or less water. At one point I was waked out of the channel and my sonar read 1’ deep. Another wake drove me too close to a wooden channel marker, a.k.a., a telephone pole in the water. The trip was a quick introduction to and a lesson in southern Florida boating that made me reminisce about the free-for-all of Chicago. I did get to see the winter home of the Toronto Blue Jays and many other Canadian snowbirds before my short ride ended at the Clearwater Beach Municipal Marina.
Tommi Linnansaari arrived and stayed for a few days as I headed south to Tampa. He is spending his well-earned sabbatical in western Florida. He brought his fishing equipment which required his van and then filled the cockpit and every cubby hole on the boat with fishing stuff. It was great to have him on board because I can’t fish alone unless sea conditions are perfect. We fished for a couple of days offshore at the artificial reefs and inside the islands when the weather started getting rough. We came through John’s Pass on a Saturday to enjoy the South Florida boating craziness of a fine weather day, complete with the dodging Tiki Bar Boats, giant yachts that dwarfed and waked WW, and the local water sheriff. I suspect we didn’t experience the full wild west of boating anarchy that afternoon with the sheriff ready to take on any outlaws.
Our anchorage one night was just behind St. Petersburgh Beach (officially St. Pete Beach) off Boca Ciega Bay. We nestled in among the multimillion-dollar homes and their big boats on lifts, barbequed our Bluefish, enjoyed the dolphin and pelican shows, watched near misses of WW by the local sunset cruise tours, and got waked by a close-pass, local boater coming back from late night beverages. We were deep in this little bay because the weather was going to get bad overnight. A strong north wind displaced the predicted WNW wind and yes, swung us about 180oC, but it also kept other boaters off the water well into the next day. We trolled around the beautiful Boca Ciega Bay, Indian Key, and Pinellas National Wildlife Refuge, anywhere we could go that wasn’t being frothed up by 25-knot north winds and 3’ waves. The sun shone and fishing was great, but alas catching was poor because: wind from the west fish bite best; wind from the south blows the bait into its mouth; wind from the east fish bite least, and wind from the north, smart fishers go not forth.
We pulled into Pass-a-Grille Marina to pick up the rest of Tommi’s family for an afternoon tour around the area while avoiding the bumpy waters. Still no fish caught, but the kids caught a couple of good naps. Back at the dock, we grabbed some dinner and the family headed home. I enjoyed a nightcap at The Wharf next door (literally as you can see in the photos), then settled in for the predicted two days of nasty weather that had put me at the dock again. The weather was crappy, but the little village of Pass-a-Grille on the big St. Pete Beach looks a great place to hang out on better days.
The weather cleared and I had a sunny and smooth ride north to St. Petersburgh Municipal Marina in the heart of downtown St. Pete. This is a great boating stop because the city and businesses have invested well in their waterfront. The St. Pete Pier was excellent to visit with a market, museum, food places, and its own trolley. A short walk downtown gets you to lots of food and drink, museums, and more. My main reason for stopping was to visit my Gold Looper friends Leslie and Kevin who ran some of the big rivers with me. They live in St. Pete and completed their Great Loop just before Thanksgiving. We enjoyed a few nights on the town while reminiscing about our looping adventures, and me gleaning as much as I could about the waters ahead. One of their favourite pubs, Ruby’s Elixir, will make my “Top Ten Bars of the World”. I’ll share that list one day. I rarely break out cigars, but Ruby’s is a cigar bar (smoking still happens in some establishments in the USA) and we enjoyed a couple of my onboard cigars sitting next to big open doors while listening to excellent music. I left the cigar bands on the table because some cigars are still banned for silly reasons in the USA.
Tommi picked me up one day and we visited the beach at Anna Marie Island and despite the sun, it was still too cold to swim for a Canadian and a Finn without a sauna nearby. We stopped at the Manatee Viewing Center at Tampa Electric’s natural gas and coal-fired plant. The warmwater effluent creates perfect winter temperatures for the manatees that migrate to and safely congregate here in the hundreds. It is a very well laid-out and managed ecology-focused centre set in a natural mangrove estuary that also attracts big tarpon, big sharks, and dolphins, and it is free to the public.
Kudos to the company, but the viewing background is a massive industrial complex that still burns coal. Extracting, transporting, and burning coal is not good for the environment, nor is it good for people’s health or wealth with mining wages hovering around $20/hour. Many of the barges I passed on the rivers were filled with coal from the states of the eastern Mississippi River watershed, although most coal now comes from western states. Coal for energy production is being phased out in the USA (and Canada), but the high level of energy use I am witnessing and the threat of another Trump presidency predict that burning coal will persist for a long time in the USA. That coal is being replaced by natural gas for energy production in the USA isn’t much of an improvement for the environment. Scarier still is that global coal use continues to increase significantly, especially in the largest and still growing industrial nations, China and India.
Back in Canada, some people argue that our national quest to reduce the burning of all fossil fuels is meaningless within the global context of climate change because we contributed 1.8% to global CO2 emissions in 2005 and our reduction efforts dropped this to 1.5% in 2020. It is difficult to challenge these statistics. However, it is important to remember that extracting and burning fossil fuels is bad news for the environment - the land, water, air, and living things including humans, and with impacts extending far beyond the places of extraction and burning. And then there is our zealous overuse of petrochemicals. Canada and many nations are working very hard to reduce the unhealthy consequences for the environment, but we do need to reduce our reliance on these hydrocarbons because the current usage is destroying our living space.
We still don’t have solutions for our very real energy crisis. For example, parking combustion engines while we move to electrified vehicles will reduce direct CO2 emissions but this just transfers significant environmental impacts elsewhere. It is not a solution despite zealous efforts by rich white guys and politicians. More on the electrification of automobiles later but here is Mr. Bean’s analysis. Perhaps the leadership of the electrifying religion should live a winter in northern Canada where a near-total reliance on fossil fuels won’t change until some drastically new, clean energy source is discovered, maybe its a geothermal option.
I went with Tommi and Jonna to watch their son play hockey for the Tampa Bay Juniors. This league is a pathway into the USA’s college hockey programmes. We spent the next day on Tampa Bay trying to catch a fish and alas, that cold north wind kept the fish hunkered down somewhere else. The plan was to head south that day, but the next storm was approaching. I chose a dock near downtown Tampa, Marjorie Park Marina, next door to Tom Brady to sit out the next few days of cold steady rain and gusting, 45-knot winds.
Until next time and hopefully with a report on warmer weather,
Allen
Tampa Bay, FL
