January 16. Needless to say our departure from Hawk’s Cay was not as early as it should have been. We left their harbor and headed into a strong tidal current coming from the channel through the Long Key Viaduct and a strong headwind on top of it. The next two miles were some of the most difficult of the trip as the waves, swells, wind and current all added up to a randomly choppy mess. When the water gets this way I find myself gripping my oar handles too tightly for fear of having them knocked from my hands when the blades hit the tops of waves. Gripping aggravates blisters and by the time I reached the first protected shore on Long Key I was ready to stop on the beach and mend my hands for a while. We pulled up on a nice sandy beach where two friendly fellows, Tom and Eli came out to examine our boat. They told us that this spot had been the sight of Zane Grey’s fishing lodge before the hurricane in 1935 took it away. They pointed to a pace off shore we had just rowed across that had been the site of the dock. There was no trace. After this rest followed a three mile piece along the lee shore of Long Key to a deserted point with a sandy beach where we made a lunch stop sitting on the sand leaning against each other’s backs. On walking along this wild beach I could not help but take note of the frequency of flotsam that had washed ashore from careless boaters. I doubt that there was an interval longer than five feet on that whole beach between neighboring pieces of plastic or other non biodegradable man made trash. My mind started calculating the number of items per mile. This country needs to have a public service corps engaged in collecting all of this stuff to be recycled or properly disposed of.

After lunch on this hot sunny beach another long struggle against the wind brought us to the Caloosa Marina on Lower Matecombe Key where Heather found an unsympathetic clerk at the neighboring hotel so we talked the dock master into letting us tie up the boat between to piers and stay beside it. So after it became dark we set up tent on the concrete near the boat and went to bed early so we could get up and out early enough to not be seen. The dock master was most helpful and refused to let us pay for the slip we were occupying. After eating in the restaurant at the end of the dock we walked back to the tent. On the way a couple in a big power boat invited us to stay on board their boat but we decided it was best to sleep nearer ours. The ensuing night was nearly sleepless. At midnight a visitor to the bar across the harbor revved up his Harley to a decibel level I have never heard before and pealed out and down the highway. I think we heard the roar of this motorcycle all the way to Long Key. A major floodlight came on after dark and lit up the tent as if it were daylight. In spite of being exhausted, I lay wide away. At about 3:00 a.m. a man with a dog walked by outside and said in a loud voice that that g.d. canoe was on the bottom. I jump out of my bag to check on the boat but found it lying peacefully where we had left it. A short time later the powerboat next to ours was the scene of a pre-fishing tournament meeting and then the boats started up and headed out with a roar.