Everglades City and Shallow Spot on Indian Key Channel
Below, you will find a superbly informative report from Captain Rich Gano, concerning his very recent passage from Indian Key to Everglades City. The shoal depths he observed near marker #17 are the shallowest anyone has ever reported here on the Cruisers’ Net between Indian Key and Everglades City. Clearly, cruisers are going to have to take this shoaling into account, and probably play the tides. We would welcome more info on these shallows near #17 from fellow cruisers. PLEASE e-mail me at CruisingWriter@CruisersNet.net if you have the opportunity to sound this channel.
There’s also lots of good shoreside info on Everglades City in Captain Rich’s posting. We need more messages like this one!
Subject: Everglades City
Cruising News: We spoke a north bound 34-foot trawler with 3.5 ft draft this AM, and they reported failure to get into Everglades City due to grounding. They stated that it was a low tide. We brought Calypso, our 4.5 foot draft Calypso in here at high tide today (+2.25 feet) and saw really shallow water at marker 17 only, and that was about 2 feet under us. We carefully adjusted the Humminbird to read depth under the deepest part of the boat using a lead line before we got into the channel; so our readings are within inches. Where you saw shallow water between markers 27 and 29, we saw minimum 4 feet under our keel. At the sharp left hand turn, there was 6-9 feet under our keel. It\’s a sure bet we could not transit past marker 17 without tidal assistance, but the rest of the transit was a breeze.
We rode our bikes all over town, and there are a ton of eating establishments. The Rod and Gun Club is not on my list due to pricing.
There is one small market store for essentials, and I found a fuse and some butt connectors I wanted at the True Value hardware a quarter mile north from the market. There is no laundry facility in Everglades City.
It is evident from a couple of people I spoke with that this place folds up in the summer. It seems a number of the workers and business owners are seasonal in their presence here.
One business owner pointed out a very fine looking piece of property across a branch of the river complete with many newly planted palms and boat slips. It is a high-end RV camp. Lots go for $600,000.00 and slips for a 32-foot boat would be around 300K. Only class 1 RVs under two years of age are accepted. Maybe some people are not affected by either the economy or good sense.
Rich Gano
And, more about Everglades City and the Rod and Gun Club from Captain Rich
Everglades City was fun for a day or two as we biked about from our position alongside the Rod and Gun Club seawall.
The Rod & Gun Club itself has a long ways to go in the management of their seawall moorings. About ten cruising sized boats can fit comfortably alongside, and clubs from the Sarasota area south like to come down here during to cool no-bug months of March/ April. What with being a bit isolated, the R&G Club is a bit prone to having clubs show up on a “flexible” schedule; although
the two clubs we saw showed up on time. Anyway, the staff there works three shifts and the pass-down is not very good between shifts. They do not monitor a radio, and there was nobody to assist in mooring when we showed up (that doesn’t bother me because I hate dock hands pulling and pushing when I have control of my own boat). We ended up extending our stay by two nights and when the second club showed up (we were not informed of this reservation) we were asked to vacate and told to talk to the other shift about a refund for the last night. Being immediately out of reliable cell contact the moment we left town, I will now rely on the US Mail to carry my request for refund.
Before we vacated our spot, we were offered a temporary spot with no power and told we could remain there if they could not fit us into a powered spot after the boat club got settled. After getting two 42-foot boats moved to this location (it was high tide – the ONLY time to move a 4.5-foot draft boat around), I sounded around and found that we had about 6 inches under us and 2 feet of tide due to lower in the next few hours. We had no time to dicker and promptly left for anchorage six miles away.
I am not pissed off or trying to paint a negative picture of the R&G Club (but don’t eat there). We’ll use them again if we ever pass this way again (you have to – they are the only mooring in town, anchorage is way off downstream), but you need to be prepared to deal with a “marina” way down the list from something like Marina Jack in Sarasota. It’s part of their charm. It appears that if we had been able to predict our travels and made reservations before the boat clubs (over two months ago) we would have had prior claim to our spot, no matter how many boat clubs came in.
As for us, we are just as happy to be able to move on safely despite running through an area with small craft warnings.
Rich Gano
CALYPSO
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