St. Patrick's Day Paddle

This heron likes the high rent district of Florida - looking at Capri Island

Another miserable day in South Florida – temps in the high 70’s, full sun and a moderate breeze. We paddled today from Capri Island to Tigertail Beach and back. How’s that for exotic-sounding locations? This was on the north side of Marco Island, if you are looking for it on a map. Actually, here is a map of the trip, straight off the GPS on Al’s deck.

Starting spot is labeled "Tigertail", but the beach by that name is at the
southern end of the route

It was only 6.5 miles, but we contended with currents, wind waves and lots of boat wakes. Geezer Mike didn’t like the choppy stuff, but he did well in it, keeping the cockpit side up all the way. The area is full of mangrove islands and shifting sand beaches. The major part of the outer beach did not show on the GPS topo or on the navigational chart.

For you birder’s, here are some goodies from the past day: a Barred Owl was sitting was sitting in the road just after dark as we came back from our paddle last evening. Two of them hang around the campground and call periodically through the night. A Chuck-will’s-widow is calling as it gets dark tonight. On our paddle, we had a large number of Royal Terns, along with a few Caspians and one Sandwich Tern. Some shorebirds were found, though not some of the ones we’d hoped for. New for the trip were Least Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs and Piping Plover.

Corn beef and cabbage - and Yuengling

Our launch spot for the paddle was the Capri Fish House Restaurant, where Naples Kayak Company also has a kayak rental location (they invited us to launch at their place). It’s St. Patty’s Day, of course, and as we landed, we found the place had a corned beef and cabbage special – how could we resist? It was good and plentiful, and hit the spot! No Guinness, though. Mike asked the waiter if they had it, and he replied “No, we only have beer and wine”. Paradise does have a few short-comings.