>dave kruger wrote: > >Hell of a story. What is the layout there? How could they get into a situation >where they could not get turned around toward shore? I paddled that route this spring. Papillion Key is beautiful island about 1.5mi off the mainland of tangled mangrove swamp. In my trip reconasance, several folks said it was the nicesest beach campground between chokoloskee and flamingo. Rabbit Key, their intended destination, is also the furthermost island from the mangrove mainland. The path between these islands takes you somewhat across open water heading N by NW. These folks were never paddling towards shore (after being carried out to sea they would have been, but by then they were spent). Shore, if you can call it that, would have been to their right about a mile. This is probably why they were paddling into breakers. The nearest rivers, they passed the day before. The chart I have shows the soundings in feet, it's shallow flats marked 1 to 4ft. That would make for some very scary 4.5ft waves. I'm not sure, but I think this is one of the safest places in the country to do open water canoeing. If I were paddling a canoe (or if conditions were threatening) I would do a sort of c shaped path to keep closer to shore, if things got rough I would surf to shore and bivy it out in the mangroves. Visualize a monkey building a bed in a stoutish bush and you've got the idea. There's no dry land, just the mangroves, the mosquitos, the alligators and you. I still haven't had my gator & porpose slides made into digital images. I'll let you know when I do. I will definately go back for a 2wk trip all the way from Chokoloskee to Key Largo. Mike *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Dec 09 1999 - 23:56:35 PST
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