SMALL BOAT CRUISE: Cayo Costa by Sailing Canoe by Ida Little
We’re about to shove-off from the mucky sand/mud shore of Pine Island, on the west coast of Florida, for the island of Cayo Costa, five miles west. Michael stands at the bow of our 19- foot Grumman canoe, shin deep in tea-brown water while I roll up my pant legs before lowering the rudder slightly and stepping aboard. In this moment an old snapshot comes to mind of us in this same pose 45 years ago. Michael stands at the bow of our Old Town sailing canoe, shin deep in crystal clear Bahama water, while I hitch up my bikini before lowering the rudder and climbing aboard. Tat Old Town canoe is long gone but her tiller and rudder serve us yet. Our youthfully agile bodies are wistful memories now, but they serve us yet… bodies and memories. In Pine Island Sound the tide is falling
so we hustle to sail away from the drying cove. Ten years ago, searching for a place that satisfied our desire for undeveloped waters and isolation—never thinking we’d find anything in heavily developed Florida—we discovered this cruising gem off the southwest coast. Having found it, we’ve returned many times in late fall before the winter season begins and aſter the summer heat has passed. I’m at the helm, far back in the stern,
with Michael seated ahead of me against the leeboard thwart. Forward of the thwart, folding chairs are secured atop food and gear for two weeks. Phil Bol- ger, writing about our cruising his 26’ canoe cruiser design we named Dugong, commented: “We will be austere and independent, and they are. But by all the gods we’ll have this, that, and the tape deck, and they do.” Plus ça Change. That we take all this “stuff ” seems
to be the magic dust of our boating life. Our comfort-driven style started with our cruise of the Bahamas sailing a Hobie Cat while towing a canoe. When we set out on that trip, we planned to keep cruising as long as we enjoyed the journey. And the life. Though we were limited to the amount of gear that would fit inside a covered 17-foot canoe, we made sure we had—to list but a few of the items—books, two sets of bed sheets, typewriter, guitar, sleeping pads, a good tent, a bottle of rum…and jugs of fresh water to allow for a quickie
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bath every night. We chose not to suffer deprivation. Ten, and now, we were never out to
prove anything nor to see how much we could endure. When cruising became our life, we treated it as, well, life. We took brief fresh water showers every evening, kept our sheets free of sand, enjoyed a cocktail at sunset. We lived as if we would be doing this forever. And though we are no longer out for an indefinite period of time, we still cruise as if we are. By now we’ve added comfortable folding chairs, a two burner propane stove, espresso-maker, a greater variety of tasty (though still unrefriger-
ated) foods, padding in the bottom of the canoe, and comfortable life vests to pad our backs. By taking care of comfort and not being in a hurry or driven to make a destination, we’re still enjoying boating forty years later. In today’s lingo, we are “slow cruisers”. We can’t see Cayo Costa, the low, 7
-mile-long island we are headed for, but we have a placemat chart that shows the channels and islands and approximate depths. Since we are sailing a canoe that needs but a couple inches to float, we are not concerned about depth or shoals, though we should have learned our les- son by now that to not float only takes
SMALL CRAFT ADVISOR
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