February 11, 20124: After an exercise hike on Murphy Island, I continue south, cross Lake George, and take a change on a funky but cheap marina.
In the morning, after breakfast — a mixed berry clafoutis — and chores and a chat with Jason via FaceTime, I leashed up my pups and took them to shore for what I liked to call a “power walk:” a brisk walk on a trail or pathway where the goal is to keep up speed and get my heart pumping. I wanted to close the Exercise ring on my Apple Watch. (If you have a fitness watch, you know what I mean.)
The Hike
The information I had from the Internet about Murphy Island said that it had some trails. I even saw a map. I figured I’d walk to the other side of the island — there seemed to be a trail going right down the middle of it — and back, a distance of about 2 miles.
The trail map for Murphy Island. I don’t know when the trails were laid or when they were last maintained, but I challenge anyone to find and stay on the trails shown here.
Here’s the data from my morning hike on GaiaGPS. It drew the track line as I walked so I knew when I was doubling back toward the boat.
As I got off the boat, I encountered one of the hikers and he said there were lots of trails, a lot more than any map. I decided to fire up a GPS tracking app I have on my phone — the highly recommended Gaia GPS — so I wouldn’t get lost.
It was a good thing I did because the trails were not marked and were very overgrown in spots. I was never sure which trail I was on and whether it would take me across the island, as I hoped it would. Finally, I wound up on a trail that seemed to be doubling back in the direction I’d come from. At that point, I’d had enough of the jungle woods terrain and was ready to be back. We wound up walking just 1.8 miles.
The campers were gone when I returned. I let my pups off their leashes for a while so they could run around. Then we went back to the boat and prepped for departure. Later, I’d find two ticks on me and one on one of my dogs. (Fortunately, neither had bitten me and my dogs have tick meds to prevent ticks from burrowing in.)
Back to the River
We continued south. At this point, the river had finally narrowed down quite a bit and was more interesting to cruise on. There were lots of birds, including the usual herons, egrets, and osprey. The farther south I went, the more osprey I saw actually nesting in the nests on nearly every channel marker. I didn’t see any alligators; that was still to come.
I did a slow cruise until I got to Lake George, then upped the RPM to 3000 and sped down the lake at about 14 knots. Lake George is a relatively large — maybe 10 nautical miles long? — lake with a straight channel almost right down the middle. Not exactly stimulating surroundings; just the kind of place I like to go fast and get through quickly.
I’d seen an anchorage near a “fish camp” at the south end of the lake. On Active Captain, someone claimed you could dock at the fish camp for $10 per night and I thought I’d check it out.
(By this point, I’d pretty much thrown out my original plan. I never did stay at Georgetown Marina or any other marina down there.)
Docking at Volusia Bar Fish Camp Marina
Some of the slips were completely filled with weeds.
Volusia Bar Fish Camp Marina had some slips with boats, some slips that were empty, and some slips that were full of weeds. (Hydrilla?) As I started past the marina, I saw some people on a sailboat and called out to them, asking if the marina rented slips. They assure me that it did.
I tried the phone number listed in Active Captain when no one answered on the radio. It was a wrong number. The guy who answered said he wished he had a dollar for every call he got about the marina. (A side note here: this is what drives me nuts about Active Captain data: no one checks it to make sure it’s accurate or up-to-date. It’s pretty much unreliable.)
I drove past slowly, figuring I’d check out the anchorage. As I went past, a woman came out of a container-turned-office. When I continued past toward the second of two anchorages, she went back in. Could she be the dockmaster?
I turned around and went back. I pulled up at the face dock near the office. The woman came out again. I asked about a slip and she said she had one. How much? $20, she told me. (Later, I realized it was $10 for the slip and $10 for power. I didn’t use power, but I still think it was a deal for $20.)
This alligator was about 2 feet long. It was sunning itself on a log about 4 feet from the dock.
Because of the short finger piers, I had to back in. The wind worked against me, making it difficult. But the dockmaster — Tina was her name — grabbed a line and helped pull me in. When the boat was secured, I put leashes on my pups and followed her back to the office. We passed a small alligator sunning itself on a log along the way. It looked fake. I asked if it was real.
She laughed. “Yes,” she said. “We have thousands of alligators here. Don’t walk your dogs close to shore.”
I went to the office, gave her a $20 bill because it looked as if credit cards were not an option, and thanked her. She pointed out the porta-potties. I saw the trash dumpster. I walked my dogs far away from shore and went back to the boat. The alligator was still there.
A Night in the Jungle
Back at the boat, I started that night’s dinner: salt and pepper ribs that would take 3 hours to bake at 300°F. (I need to share the recipe here; it’s a good one.) It was a poor decision to make them on what turned out to be a very hot afternoon, but I didn’t want them to go bad and they were next on my list of what to cook. I had some leftover short rib for lunch.
Airboats are noisy, even when moving at idle speed through a marina.
The main source of noise at the marina that afternoon was the airboats. They apparently go wild out in the shallow water south of the marina and I could hear them all afternoon. Fortunately, it was Super Bowl Sunday and most of them were gone by 5 PM. I had tried flying my drone to see them, but I don’t like flying the drone too far away from me in an area with so many birds.
Here’s a view of the marina from my drone. It was a gorgeous day.
I had my dinner out on my screened in back deck. It was good. With the sun going down, the weather cooled considerably. That’s about when I began to realize that I was the only one at the marina. Tina had gone home and none of the boats had either liveaboards or transients on board.
The bird sounds started around dusk. All kinds of bird sounds. And probably frogs. And crickets, of course. The various sounds went on throughout the night. It sounded like I was in the jungle of an old Tarzan movie.
The sounds totally freaked out my dog Lily, who is a bit nervous to begin with. She refused to sleep on the bed. Instead, she slept in the main cabin on one of the bench seats. Is it possible that she wanted to keep a lookout? I don’t know. She’d never done that before and hasn’t done it since.
Anyway, I didn’t sleep very well that night because of all the noise. I had my screened windows and hatches open because it was so warm that night so the sounds were really loud. Part of me really enjoyed the novelty of all these nature sounds. But the other part just wanted to sleep.
