Day 4: Rodger's River Bay Chickee to South Joe River Chickee
Tuesday, March 8
Again, the alarm roused us after four hours of sleep. I had hoped to get a little extra sleep, but we wanted to catch the tide in the Nightmare while it was still low and rising. We mixed a Spiz, chugged it for breakfast, and mixed another one for the road.
This picture shows how we packed the canoe for reserve buoyancy in the event of a capsize. Watertight barrels and dry bags were strapped to the bottom of the canoe, then flotation air bags were inflated along the sides to provide extra buoyancy and press everything together. The air bags can also be used to balance the load and fine-tune the side-to-side trim.
We had a tailwind and favorable current going down Broad River. Surprisingly, even though the tide had been rising for a few hours, the upper river was still running out.
There were a lot of birds on Broad River, including wood storks, roseate spoonbill, and swallow tail kites, which are fun to watch.
The Nightmare is such a fun place, I like to take pictures and videos.
Oops, wrong turn! The headwind was surprisingly strong, even in the sheltered waters of the Nightmare. I guess I should have taken the hint that we were actually heading east instead of south. We had a little detour up the Wood River. There was a nice current pulling us in, which we had to paddle against on the way back out. I guess I should have been paying more attention to navigation, instead of taking pictures and videos. The detour cost us about an hour.
Short gator video. The beginning of the Nightmare was the only place where we saw gators on the course.
The higher than normal tides associated with the new moon may have made it easier to wander off course in the Nightmare. PenguinMan came through on the next high tide, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, and wandered off course. His tale is told on the Watertribe Forum.
We backtracked down Wood River against the tidal current, and found the proper path through the Nightmare.
We exited the Nightmare and headed up Broad Creek, back into the headwind.
The upper parts of Broad Creek are as narrow as the Nightmare.
The high water made us feel as though we were paddling in the tree tops. The main channel was not always obvious.
There are some pretty bird songs in this video.
Out of Broad Creek, and continuing upland on Harney River.
A stiff headwind on Harney River was blowing against an incoming current, which created surprisingly rough conditions, considering the sheltered area.
We made the turn from Harney River to Shark River, which meant a more favorable wind direction. In a proud Class 3 accomplishment, we unstrapped the sailing rig from the spray cover, and I set everything up in about 15 minutes with Lauren still paddling; we never stopped the boat. We had to do it afloat in any case because there was no dry land available.
We enjoyed nice sailing conditions all the way down Shark River. The wind was partially blocked by the trees, but we maintained good speed on the gusts that came through, and rested our sore paddling muscles.
It was such a pleasure and unexpected gift to sail; we were very tired.
I thought we would not be able to sail anymore after we turned south through Shark River Cut into Oyster Bay.
Oyster Bay was very windy and somewhat rough in places where it was exposed through openings to Whitewater Bay. It was a real blessing to sail through this section. If we were not able to sail, it would have been a 5 mile slog in rough conditions, and most likely in the dark.
It was so much fun that I took a lot of pictures and videos.
Some nice ama-on-water action in this one. The nose cones behaved well.
We raced the setting sun to the end of the bay, in hopes of getting into the shelter of Joe River before dark.
Coming close to the desolate mangrove islands reminded us that we were deep in the wilderness.
We arrived at the Joe River entrance just as it was getting dark, and packed up the sailing rig in the lee of an island, and continued paddling up Joe River into the headwind in the dark.
We had sailed 11 miles in total. If we did not have the sailing, it would have been a very late arrival at camp.
We arrived at the Chickee at 10 PM. We were looking forward to a respite from the wind, but unfortunately there was a hurricane of wind blowing across the chickee all night long. We had to keep a careful eye on everything so things did not blow off the chickee into the dark abyss that surrounded us. With considerable effort, we pulled the canoe up onto the chickee so that it would be safe.
We carefully rolled up the tent flaps to minimize the flapping noise, put in our earplugs and set the alarm for four hours. At least there were no mosquitoes!
252 miles down! Only fifty or so to go, but we had to cross 34 miles of Florida Bay straight into the terrible headwind. Time to get some sleep and worry about that tomorrow.
Link to Day 5-6 to the finish
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