Monday April 8: Serenity Island

The 42 mile trip to Serenity Island was a welcome relief from the past couple of days travel through heavily developed shorelines of southern Florida.

All along the waterway were the spoil islands created by the dredging when the Intercoastal was first dug. Now they are home to many of the birds that live in the area - especially the osprey and cormorants. Although the islands look inviting, the water surrounding them is often no more than a couple of feet deep.

Occasionally the use of an island as a nesting site - especially by the cormorants -  really takes a toll on the island vegetation as their poop is very acidic. Eventually this island will be just dead trees.

There really wasn't much wind but these four sailboats took advantage of it. They were traveling together (you can hear them chatting on the VHF) and were headed for Cocoa Village - about another 30 miles farther up the waterway than we were going.

It took me quite a while to get past them all!




We arrived at one of our favorite places to anchor about 2 pm: Serenity Island. Doesn't the name just say it all?

 Surona was about 45 minutes behind us and due in shortly. Must be time to get the kayaks out for a quick ride to the island.

Imagine my surprise though when I walked into the cabin! Steve had cleaned up the dash and somehow Gorilla Guy and his friends took over the clean spot!

Who was the ringleader in this takeover of the newly cleaned spot???

I tried to question Cactus guy but he wouldn't take his sunglasses off - and Gorilla guy wouldn't look me in the eye when I tried to question him so he was not to be believed!

Strange goings on is all I will say :-)



So I'm leaning over the swim platform lowering my kayak into the water and almost lost my glasses in the drink - I think I would have seen some snorkeling in Steve's future but luckily they landed just on the edge after bouncing one time.

What luck! Must be time for me to buy that lottery ticket :-)

The kayaking was nice and many of the islands in this area have very long sand bars formed by the action of the wind and the waves. Eventually this little strip of sand that's left was covered when the tide was up.

Good thing a few of the island have 7 feet of water around them so we are able to get close enough to anchor by them.






Surona joined up next to us for the night. Cheryl was cooking tonight so we joined them in their aft cockpit to watch the sun go down.

Great dinner and good cards afterwards :-)

The end of another nice day of traveling with friends.