Saturday October 20th
We are heading back to the dock where we took our sunset cruise a couple of days ago. This time we are going off to one of the nearby uninhabited islands to do some shelling and I'll take my snorkel with me just in case the water is clearer that what we've had recently. Boat leaves at 9am!
[17:31]
We were on the boat with plenty of time. It was the same captain and mate that did the sunset cruise a couple of days ago. We headed up to North Captiva Island. I've uploaded a Google Earth file at the bottom of the page that shows the route.
To get to the island we had to go through the heavy wind and some rain of a storm cloud which was in the middle of the bay. It was a bit bumpy, but there were no accidents!
After that, the weather cleared up so that the rest of the day was bright and sunny. We arrived at the North Captiva beach at just after 10am. The captain just moored the boat neat the beach and we had to climb down the stairs at the front of the boat and into the surf. There was no dock nearby.
They also unloaded some umbrellas and deck chairs then pulled the boat back a little to avoid it running aground. From there, we were all left to our own devices. Linda did a bit of shell finding and I wandered over to the other side of the island (it's only about 100ft wide at the point we'd stopped at). It was a much different place than the beach on the other side, this side looked more like a river estuary, with rotting palm leaves and very shallow water. There were lots of pelicans swimming nearby but at the edge of the beach, near the undergrowth were these beasties...
That's right - the beaches were covered in thousands of tiny crabs with one massive claw. They were feeding on shellfish but as soon as I came too close, maybe 10 feet, they immediately scuttled into the grass. That gave the grass an odd clicking noise as they disappeared!
I tried a bit of snorkelling but to be honest, it was much to strong a current on the main beach, which meant that the sand was whipping back and forward and meaning there was no visibility.
Finally, it was time to leave - the boat came back to the beach and we started boarding again via the front steps. Actually, some people boarded, but the captain asked the men to jump back off the boat to lighten the load (I wasn't even on the boat yet!) Apparently, the props at the back of the boat had dug into the sand, so we had to push the boat back out to see a bit. He then returned at a slightly different angle.
When it came to my turn, the boat had slipped back out to see slightly and I found that I couldn't reach the first step of the ladder. The captain moved the boat in again and I finally got on (Linda had been on for ages). With everyone boarded, we moved off and headed North around the tip of the island.
Just around the other side, there was a small habited area with a dock and a restaurant. We stopped here and most of the people popped out for something to eat - we found an ice-cream parlour and sat out in the sun eating that. North Captiva Island is odd in that there's no bridge to it, just a weekly ferry for supplied. They do have their own small airstrip carved through the middle of the island for small aircraft. The place has mostly holiday places and no paved roads. Thus, most people travel about the island on golf carts - here is their main cart-park.
Finally, we were back in the boat and heading south back to the dock. The trip stopped briefly for some dolphins that came over to visit. But aside from them, it was uneventful. We were back on dry land by 3:15pm, just over 6 hours after we'd departed.