Little Shark River, Everglades

Our 5 hour trip from Everglades City to the anchorage in the Little Shark River in the heart of the Everglades was uneventful once we extricated ourselves from the 7 mile muddy transit to the Gulf from Everglades City. And, yes, we did run through mud again even though the charts indicated we were near high tide. Argghhh!

During the trip, the air was pretty cool so the ladies read in the pilothouse while the guys dodged crab pots from the flying bridge.

The anchorage was lovely and secluded. Except for a few fishing boats, it was just us. Here, the crew is deploying the bridle. That is the line we attach to our anchor chain to take the load off of our windlass.

After setting the anchor, we had a quick lunch and then headed off in the dinghy to explore.

What can you do with an enticing mangrove estuary except to check it out, right?

In some places, there wasn't much clearance.

Going through the mangroves, we were constantly dodging spiders and occasionally crabs like the little guy in this picture near Jim's oar.

After a fun afternoon exploring several mangrove estuaries, John tried his hand at fishing. It seems we were camped right on top of a nest of gafftopsail catfish. Ughhh.

Though their meat is supposed to be good, they are possibly the slimiest creatures on the planet. We had one land on the boat and it took Jim 20 minutes with soap & a brush to remove the slime. Somehow, they even slime the fishing line a foot above the hook. We never did figure out how they do that.

We had a pelican staying quite close to us, waiting on a chance for a free dinner so we put one of the catfish on the back deck to see if he was hungry enough to steal it off the deck.

He wasn't brave enough to steal it off of the deck so we gave it to him.

When we are anchored, the tradition is that we blow the conch horn as the sun sets. Carol and Barb had a great time practicing and then blowing. Since Barb is a french horn player, she caught on quite quickly. 

This is the view off the back of the boat!

Now it was time for the official performance. Blow, ladies, blow.

Ta Da!!

While Jim & John played a few hands of cribbage, the ladies fixed an awesome bass & sheepshead dinner, complete with fresh asparagus & a nice caprese salad.

During the night, the wind picked up substantially and the temperature dropped as a cold front pushed through.

We had a beautiful sunrise the next morning but boy was it windy - - 20 to 30 knots! Fortunately, the anchor held firm. Phew!

We had some time this morning so the ladies fixed Samba benedict - yum!

After breakfast, Jim & John headed a few miles upriver in the dinghy to check out the fish around some of the mangrove islands. Due to the high winds, they stayed behind the islands where it was calm. No fish though - - bummer.

Sunday night was the guy's chance to blow the horn. LOL.

Tomorrow, we're Key West bound.