Small Boat Cruise: Everglades

As I was leaving the house to trailer my boat, Rosie, to a launch site in the Everglades, my wife, the real Rosie, said “Please, don’t do anything stupid!”

- A.G. Monaco

I should have come out with some tough-guy retort but all I could think to say was “Baby, I think this whole idea is a little stupid.”

This was the epic adventure that would finally prove that I was still a young man, albeit one trapped in an old man’s body. Using my 1982 West Wight Potter I was out to test the limits of my meager sailing skills and strain the credulity of my friends and family in regard to my sanity. Previous forays out into the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi Barrier Islands were an anemic attempt to show that despite being older I still had “swagger.” But this foray into the Everglades made those trips seem almost childlike. Even the somewhat dismissive folks I worked with at LSU were impressed with the idea of me trying to push my sailboat through the Everglades and out into the Gulf. One in three people I told about the trip told me I was crazy, the other two just mumbled and walked away quickly.

The actuarial tables show that on average I have no more than 20 years left to live; embarking on this journey was my attempt to “to rave at close of day.” What better way to impress the inhabitants of my little non-sailing world than to drag my beat-up boat to the world’s biggest swamp, float down a shallow, obstacle laced river, taunt dangerous wildlife, and then sail to a number of islands well out in the Gulf of Mexico. Being this close to death left me little time to establish “big memories,” and the Everglades National Park seemed the right place to start.