S/V Barefoot: Everglades/Ten Thousand Islands

April 24, 2017

We are currently docked at our home dock in Marco Island.

After leaving Miami on 4/7/2017 we traveled to Little Shark River on the far south west Florida coast.

This is a remote and wild area and quite a change from the hustle and bustle of Miami. This is the 'end' of the Everglades and characterized by giant mangroves.

On a bad day the bugs can be absolutely horrendous, but due to cooler weather, the insects were not bad for most of our stay. On our first few nights we were anchored about 1/2 mile from the gulf, but a moderate wind contrary to the current caused a bad interaction between the boat and the anchor chain so we moved about 4 miles up the river and around a bend. The anchorage was smoother, but the morning of our departure, the sound of thousands of mosquitoes was louder than I have ever heard. Needless to say we raised anchor and got underway as quickly as possible to minimize our 'blood donations'!

We then traveled up the coast to Indian Key Pass and then up Russell Pass. Our anchorage was about 4 miles below Everglades City and we made two dinghy trips up to Everglades via the twisting and totally unmarked Russell Pass channel running aground only a couple of times :-). The channel is hard to follow and filled with sand and oyster bars, the first fairly soft to hit, the later very 'crunchy'. Other than the adventure, taking this channel is shorter, has somewhat less current, and keeps you away from the crab boats that put out 'swamp-you' wakes. Everglades City is the stone crab 'capital' of Florida.

Later this week we plan to head north to Pine Island Sound, one of our oldest cruising 'stomping grounds'.

A few pictures of the wild and remote Ten Thousand Islands area.

The mangroves are incredibly tall in Little Shark River - taller than any others we have seen.
I have read that these some believe that these are the 'mother' of all mangroves!