DECEMBER 2002

There's no coasting when canoeing the Everglades
Knowledgeable crew, proper equipment key to trip's success
By ARNOLD MARKOWITZ
Waterfront News Writer
Here's a Florida boating adventure verging on extreme — across the Everglades by canoe, from Tamiami Trail to Flamingo, with the help of a sail. Sailing through sawgrass, maidencane and spikerush is peculiar, but it works if there's a brisk wind from the north to shove you along. We get one with every cold front. Time your departure well and it will blow you along for a day and a half, sometimes so fast that you'll need your paddles only for steering. Then the wind quarters around — nor'east, east, and soon it's not your friend any more. Now you cross the verge into extreme. If there's a second wind, you and a crew of skilled, dependable, physically fit partners probably will have to supply it.

No coasting. Nobody's along just for the ride. "There's no search and rescue to take you out of there, no cellphone signal to call for help," says Tony Pernas, a Big Cypress ranger who organized a crew in November for his sixth crossing of the Everglades. "You'd better be self-sufficient, because you're on your own. There should be someone who knows first aid. Everybody has to be able to contribute something."
Other than your routine equipment, these are essential: A hand-held GPS with spare batteries, an accurate compass, a set of topographical maps for the swampy territory you're crossing and two nautical charts for Everglades National Park – Shark River to Lostmans River and Whitewater Bay. You need at least one person, in the lead canoe, who's good at using all those things. Just in case you go outside to the Gulf of Mexico,accidentally or on purpose, the Florida Bay chart is a worthy throw-in.

Someone in the party has to be good with the GPS, topo maps and nautical charts. "Even if you've got a GPS, if you don't know how to read a map and compass you're in trouble," Pernas says. "You can't rely on the GPS alone. It could die on you. The satellite could go down. There are too many variables to risk your life just on a GPS."

At least one person in each canoe must have command of the rudiments of sailing in front of a wind, and be able to find a puff here and there when it diminishes. Someone needs wilderness cooking skills. And everyone has to be physically fit. Pernas invented this trip — a test of sailing and paddling skills, of campcraft and trail-finding, but largely of strength and endurance, both physical and mental. He's kicking around the notion of proposing it as an official National Park Service trail event.

Shawn Beightol, who teaches chemistry at Michael Krop High School in Miami-Dade, crossed the Everglades last year on — not in — a yellow sit-on-top kayak rigged to sail. When the weather turned rough, his little boat overturned. Big Cypress Preserve ranger Tony Pernas, who sailed a canoe on the voyage, enjoyed the humor in the situation, though Beightol did not.

Enough beating around the bush. Let's start beating our way through it. Bringing someone along to drive your wheels back home, you head west on Tamiami Trail, past 40-mile Bend and the L-67, but not quite to the Shark Valley loop road. With GPS in hand, you find a left turnoff at 25-45.714 north and 80-42.306 west. That takes you to the original Tamiami Trail, an overgrown two-laner that some people call Dead Body Road, never mind why.

Now go west slowly, stopping at 25-45.655 north and 80-42.944 west. Launch there. It doesn't look right, but it is. A few strides off the road you may notice a stake with a faded orange flag marked USGS. The necessary drag through bushery and sawgrass may not be easy, but it should be short. Resist the temptation to put in at a clearing beside a culvert. It looks easy, but the sawgrass beyond is too dense.

Here's Pernas again: "We just find a place. In reality, the further east you start, the deeper the water and the longer the trip as far as miles go, but the easier it is because of the higher water level. Nearer to Shark Valley, the ground is higher and the water is lower. You want to stay in the middle of the Shark River Slough, closer to the L-67 canal."

This is a three-stage trip. In the first, you struggle through sawgrass and, if the water's not too low, paddle through acres of spikerush – bright green hollow stalks with orange tips. After sawgrass it's welcome stuff, making a soft clickety-clack sound as your canoe flicks it aside. Water high, this is effortless. Water low, spikerush is taller and denser so you have to paddle a little harder but it's easy compared to wading through sawgrass.

First night out, and maybe the second, you have two camping choices. One: Be like Pernas and his friends. Sleep, if the mosquitos let you, in the canoe on top of all your stuff.

Two: Be like Rob Cava and his two teenagers, Eliza and Teddy. They raft the canoes and, while standing in water, rig a plywood platform and pitch a tent across them. Yes, they get wet, but they dry off. After finger-squishing the bugs that sneaked into the tent with them, they sleep comfortably.

Stage two is a network of airboat trails used by the National Park Service. They're marked with white stakes and the paddling is easy, especially if the wind is still with you. Don't worry about traffic. Private airboats aren't allowed, and anyway it takes too much beer to drive one that far.

Up to now, you've been relying mostly on your compass, topographical maps and GPS because everything around you looks alike. You've had to zigzag around hammocks and carefully pick the correct airboat trail. After being able to tap bottom with your paddle this far through the river of grass, it's a little surprising to find yourself in a deep, meandering creek. Hooray! You've made it to Rookery Branch.

A short way ahead is a patch of trees that you may not notice are different. You bull your way through an acre or so of spatterdock water lilies and next thing you know you're inside a tangle of mangrove branches. Add another essential item: a gardener's pruning shears. Avoid doing it if you can, but you may have to clip a few twigs to get through to Avocado Creek and stage three.

From here on in there's nothing in your way, unless it's an opposing wind or tide. You're in the Everglades' Ten Thousand Islands, where you'll be able to camp on the National Park Service's designated sites. The first one you'll see is Canepatch, with its dock, outhouse and a path to a high-ground campsite. The dock is a good place to stretch your legs, and if you need the outhouse you may be surprised by its tolerability.
If you love mosquitos and sandflies, Canepatch is a wonderful place to camp. Otherwise, put on your long-leg pants, long-sleeve shirt and headnet, grab your belt knife and dash upland to cut a stalk of the bananas growing wild there. Then paddle on to the Shark River chickee or pass it for the Oyster Bay chickee. There you pitch your tent on a plank platform, where there's a chance of a breeze to discourage the bugs.

From mid-October on, the weather tends to be reliable. But not always. You have to monitor short and long-range forecasts before you go, but even if they're favorable you're at the mercy of change once you're under way.

Just ask Pernas: "Last year on the way out we had high water and a cold front and a hurricane coming out of the Caribbean. Halfway through the trip, they closed the park. We had 40-knot headwinds. We stayed along the north side of Whitewater Bay and into Hells Bay, rather than open water.

Year to year, he says, the ideal time for this trip is the last week of October, when the swamp still holds a nice supply of summer rain. Temperatures have dropped from broil to sizzle or even lower, and the air moves enough to soften mosquito attacks at dusk and dawn. From the start of November, count on the water being lower each week. This year, Pernas wasn't going until mid- November. "Water will be lower and it will be harder," he said. "But that's what makes it memorable."

Cava, my usual camping companion, made his first Everglades crossing with Pernas' group in 2000. Water was so low that they spent a lot of time out of the canoes, lifting and hauling them across pinnacle limestone cushioned by nothing but a thin layer of moss. One more essential: thick-soled sneakers or sandals.

Now, in what passes for winter, the cold fronts come closer together. With luck, you could get two northers in three days. If you get through the swamp with enough water under your hull, the second front could puff you all the way down Rookery Branch and Avocado Creek to Tarpon Bay
and Shark River.

Without luck you lose your wind and the tide runs upstream as you're paddling down. At that point you can turn east into Whitewater Bay and follow inside channel markers to Flamingo, or go for the Gulf and paddle outside around Cape Sable. When I made the trip in mid-October with Cava and his son Teddy, we started with a three-night camping permit and the outside route in mind.

We were kidding ourselves. An incoming tide intercepted us on Avocado Creek, where we also lost our north wind. "It's really a four-night trip, isn't it?" Rob said on the third day. That was the most eloquent remark made until, as we paddled at last down Buttonwood Canal toward Flamingo, Teddy piped up: "My shoulders are so sore, I may not be able to shrug them tomorrow."

Topographical maps are available online and in local stores that specialize in outfitting campers. In Miami-Dade County, try Jet's Florida Outdoors at 9696 SW 40th St. For more information, contact Ranger Tony Pernas at tony_pernas@nps.gov