Barracuda Bites Kayaker in Keys - in the Kayak

Breaking news from Big Pine Key (where me and Liz camped when she was pregnant with Owen and took out our Gheenoe with 9 horse outboard)...

A woman was in a double kayak with a friend when a frikkin barracuda jumped out of the water and bit her.

Check out the whole story here.

To all the barracudas out there: I am not afraid.

Gators? What gators?

Hit the Loxahatchee River run again this weekend. Rain clouds threatened. But drifted away from the area. Made the hour long run down to the second dam. Water level was very high which made it much easier than the first time we ran this stretch, floated right over all those sunken logs. Had a picnic at the second and did some swimming and riding over the dam in the mini rapid it created. Owen had a lot of fun swimming around.

Useppa Island

So Liz's dad is now a member of the Useppa Island Club. It's a very small private island with multimillion dollar "cottages" and an upscale B n B. He docks his Sea Ray there weeks at a time.

Useppa is north of Sanibel and Captiva, almost at Boca Grande. It's in, I believe Pine Island Sound.

We took the ferry over from Key West lite Pine Island. We, of course, brought our one man inflatable. It's a very natural area right on the intracoastal with only a few barrier island separating from the the Gulf of Mexico. Mangrove islands abound. Saw jellyfish (Liz got stung while cleaning her dad's boat hull), dolphins (at one point they played in the boat's wake), pelicans, gopher tortoises, and just a ton of birds.

I got two short paddles in - it was just too hot. But we did take the dinghy out to Cabbage Key and Cayo Costa state park.

First trip since November

Cold weather. Trying to buy a house. Trips to Disney. Plain laziness.

Many things conspired to keep us off the water... but yesterday we finally made it out... for a short after-work run down the intracoastal, under the Linton Blvd. bridge, past multimillion dollar mansions.

And now that the kayak is on top of the car and all the gear is packed we'll probably make it out this weekend too.