The Inaugural Voyage of the
Chick-a-Dees
Segment 1, Day 3 – Wednesday, 10/21/2020
CT Segment 01Campsite on Gulf Islands National Seashore to Best Western Navarre
We awoke Wednesday morning around 6 am but with the high morning winds we again didn’t venture out onto the water until around 10 am. About a mile up the beach we came to where we should have camped the night before – the Big Sabine Pt campsite. This is a long time campsite for backpackers on the Florida National Scenic Trail which Gulf Islands also lets boaters use. It’s the only legal primitive campsite on either the Ft Pickens Area or Okaloosa Area of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. So don’t do what we did! From the land it’s easy to find, but several people had told me it was difficult to find from the water. So .. it starts from where you can see a high-rise bench built by the Boy Scouts amid the dunes and ends near a bunch of grafittied concrete ruins. With several dunes there it’s well protected from the wind coming in from various quarters and high tides. A much better spot than we had picked out the night before and probably the most protected spot for many miles.
We took a short break to check out the campsite, then pulled out into the center of Santa Rosa Sound and headed east into the heavy headwinds with the condos of Navarre Beach a vague hint in the distance. The rest of the day was basically a repeat of the preceding day. High winds in the morning, tapering off late in the afternoon. The dunes of Gulf Islands to our south and the homes of Navarre to our north.
We cut across the sound to follow along the northern shore for a while, thinking we might be a little better protected from the winds there, but the wind shifted in the late morning from north-easterly to easterly, so it was pretty much the same no matter where we paddled.
Still the condos of Navarre Beach steadily grew closer..
And gradually the winds died down as we got closer to sunset.
Just before we paddled under the Navarre bridge I shot one picture ahead towards the bridge then shot one picture behind us at the setting sun.
Due to private property there are only 2 places to stop for the night anywhere close to Navarre – the Best Western Navarre, a budget motel with a little beach to pull up on, and the Navarre Beach Campground, which is one of those rare private campgrounds in Florida that will take tent campers for a night. But the campgroundhas a seawall to get your kayaks up and over and we weren’t feeling too strong, so we opted for the motel. In fact, the path from the little beach up to the parking lot had been damaged by Sally and consisted of foot-deep soft sand and a 6-foot high bank, so it was probably just as hard to negotiate as any seawall. But Dena recruited a strong-looking young man from the motel who helped us get the kayaks and gear up to our room.
When we had called for reservations that morning they had a hard time understanding that we were coming in by boat and kept asking Dena for a vehicle description. They finally “got it” and settled on “red kayak and blue kayak” to fill in the required box. 🙂 They were actually very good to us and gave us room 109 on the first floor which faces the pool and let us chain our kayaks up to the pool fence right outside our door.
We threaded the cable, set the motion-sensor alarm, and stowed our gear in our room. By the time this was all done it was 8:15 and the restaurant and bar next door closed at 8 pm. In fact, pretty much everything in Navarre closes at 8 pm during the week. Dena walked across the highway to the Winn-Dixie in search of something to eat while I chatted with a couple of folks by the pool. My back had been bothering me ever since we launched and I wasn’t up to any extra walking around. She returned with a cheese pizza and soft drinks which we ate with our new friends Barbara and Brad. Then it was time to hit the room. We threw away trash, plugged in all our rechargeables, took showers, laid some stuff out to dry, then hit the sack.
The next morning my back was worse and just not up to hauling everything back down to the beach to continue on. We called Joe and explained and he said he could bring our car and trailer over later in the morning. We hung out around the motel until about 9, then started moving our kayaks and gear up to the front of the motel. Joe and Karen showed up about 10 am, we quickly loaded up, and were on our way home.
Thus, our first section paddle on the FCT ended more with a whimper than a bang, but we did get started. About 40 miles done, most of it in strong headwinds. There were some tough times with the wind as well as some beautiful times on the water. Most of all we learned a lot about saltwater paddling, tides and tidal currents, negotiating busy boat channels, using our VHFs to advantage, and that our kayaks and gear were mostly up to the trip. All the way back, on our 5-hour drive home, we discussed what had worked well, what didn’t work so well, and what we would change on the next trip in November when we’ll finish up the little bit left of Segment 01 of the CT and start on Segment 02.
Our first voyage was interesting and we learned a lot, so we committed ourselves at least to coming back in November and completing this first section of the CT.
