The Inaugural Voyage of the
Chick-a-Dees

Segment 1, Day 2 – Tuesday, 10/20/2020

CT Segment 01 Ft McRee on Perdido Key to Campsite on Gulf Islands National Seashore

I was up just before dawn to get some sunrise pics before we headed out. I walked up onto the dunes and shot our campsite against the gray of morning light.

Then I walked down to the beach on the Pensacola Pass and shot the sunrise over Ft Pickens. Several years ago while working for the Florida Trail Association I had stood on the Ft Pickens side and shot sunset pictures across the Pass towards Ft McRee.

I sat and watched first a trawler come up the Pass into port …

… and then a coastal cargo ship named the “Columbia”. We were to see both of them again later in the day.

As I walked back to our tents I took a more southerly route and came upon the remains of Battery Center from Ft. McRee. This artillery battery was completed in 1901 as part of a triangle of forts guarding the Pensacola Pass. It was deactivated in 1920.

As I approached the water again I ran across our friend the Great Blue Heron going down for his morning fishing.

By the time I returned to camp Dena was not only awake but almost packed up, so I hurriedly struck my tent and loaded up the kayak. We shoved off around 10:15 into 8-13 knot headwinds. The entrance to the Robertson Island channel from the Pensacola Pass is very shallow and the water on a falling tide was really ripping through there, throwing up 5-6 foot waves. There was no way we could breach that for a straight shot over to Ft Pickens on the other side of the Pensacola Pass. So we stayed to the west, off the point of Ft McRee, and pointed our noses at the Pensacola Lighthouse on the north shore.

We reached the USCG station on the north shore about 11:30 and had to sit there in growing winds for about half an hour waiting for a break in the commercial boat traffic..

By using the VHF to track the commercial boats, we finally started out. We crossed back to the south side at Ft Pickens, skirting around trawlers, cargo ships (including our friend the “Columbia”), tugs pushing barges and the customs boat. The wind was pretty tough getting across, but it had to be done speedily due to the traffic so it was just a matter of putting our heads down and paddling hard. By giving it everything we had we managed the 1-mile crossing in 30 minutes.

Along the way we saw a pod of at least 5 bottle-nosed dolphins fishing and a ray jumped up right in front of my boat.

Just as we reached Ft Pickens we had a fly by from 2 of the Blue Angels.

Once at Ft Pickens we turned east again, with the building wind heavy in our faces. At one point it was well over 20 knots and it took 5 minutes for me to pass a bush on the shore. I had to laugh, it really was ridiculous – here we were paddling like mad to progress 10 feet 🙂 So I called a halt there around 1 pm and we landed and had some lunch while waiting out the wind.

We started back up again at 2 pm after the winds had dropped to around 10 knots and we were again able to make some headway. We passed our trawler friend from dawn and paddled steadily along the coastal dunes of the Ft Pickens area of the Gulf Islands National Seashore.

After passing a headland near the closed Ft Pickens campground we could make out the high-rise condos of Pensacola Beach in the far distance. We had to get well beyond the beach to find our campsite for the night.

So we paddled on, without a break, with the condos getting ever closer, until around 6 pm when we crossed under the Pensacola Beach bridge. Fortunately, the winds started dying down and the closer to Pensacola Beach we got the faster we could go. By the time we reached the bridge the water was almost dead calm.

Since it was getting towards dusk we thought we might pull into the Paradise Inn for the night – an inexpensive sound-side motel. But the back of their property had been damaged in Hurricane Sally and it looked like it would be extremely difficult to get out there. We also wondered whether we would get any sleep with the outdoor bar and live band playing between the two arms of the motel.

So we continued on. Past mansions and condos until we were once again cruising along the sand dunes of Gulf Island National Seashore.

By 10 pm we were pretty well shot for the day, having been paddling almost without break since 10 am plus it was full on dark. Dena got out her fancy flashlight-stun gun that her neighbor talked her into buying and scoured the sandy banks for a decent place to sleep. At one point she stopped, bow on the bank, to investigate a spot and got stuck. That is what determined our campsite! She was too tired to deal with getting herself unstuck. So we quickly unloaded, threw up our tents on the shore, ate a quick “lunch” in our tents and tried to sleep. Unfortunately, the beach was very narrow and our tents turned out to be a bit too close to the water. The high tide was about 3:30 am and I slept fitfully, waking every 30 minutes or so to check the water’s edge as the tide and a NE wind brought the water creeping ever closer to my tent. I finally drifted off around 3 pm, still dry in my tent although the next morning when I awakened I found that the water had made it to the stake that pulls out my front vestibule. Close call!