Day 4 Watson’s Place

Rising at 5:00 Bruce and I start packing while eating cold cereal and drinking tea. We need to make an early start today, listening to the forecast last night we hear that the winds will be out of the east today with gust to 30 mph, not a good thing for today’s intended route. We will be crossing some large inland bays that are shallow and have a tendency to produce large pitching waves in high winds. As the sun peeks over the mangroves we bid farewell to Lostmans 5.
The first bay we cross is Platte Creek Bay that has 1 of the only 2 chickee’s (from the Seminole word for house) that survived hurricane Wilma. The chickee backs up against a small mangrove island and can be quite buggy in warm weather. Platte Creek chickee was constructed by a land company in the 1920’s as a refueling dock, it still stands after all these years.

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We cross the bay and start up the small streams that connects Platte Creek Bay and Dads Bay. Dads Bay is the smallest of all the bays that we will cross, maybe 600 acres in size we make the crossing in less than 15 minutes.

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Our next crossing will be that of Alligator Bay which is about a 2 mile crossing, as we exit Platte creek the wind begins to intensify out of the east and the water starts to churn, with my camera stowed in a small yellow Otter Box, it is then placed in a deck bag for safe keeping. I slide the bungee of the spray skirt around the coming of the cot pit and zip up my pfd for the trip across. Bruce starts out first and I watch him seeing that he is paddling harder on the down wind side of his kayak, I deploy the rudder and start off quartering the wind 45 minutes later we are across and now heading up a narrow canal that twist and turns through the mangroves some almost touching overhead. Last trip this way we saw a great number of alligators and today would be no different.

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Bruce and I had planed for an early lunch stop at Darwin’s Place. Darwin’s is located on a large shell mound on Possum Key, it was first settled by the Colusa Indians and followed by a number of white settlers. The first of the recorded settlers being Loren Brown who was a banana planter and later Arthur Darwin who was the last of the residents to live in the national park he died at the ripe old age of 112. The foundation of Darwin’s home is still visible on the cleared camp site.

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The Settlers of this area used readily available materials for the construction of their homes.

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After Lunch we push off for our last two bay crossing, Cannon Bay and Chevalier Bay which a connected by a short channel the two bays combined are over 3 miles wide and are now whipped to a fury by winds gusting to 30 mph. Bruce and I cross as quickly as we can.
We turn east into the Chatham River, here I am able to take advantage of the wind and deploy a hand held sail that makes my kayak skim across the water being pushed along by the wind being channeled down the river.
We are at Watson’s Place moments later.

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Once the home of the notorious Ed “Bloody” Watson, who operated a thriving sugar cane and vegetable farm on the Chatham River. Ed Watson as legend goes, was suspected to be the murder of Belle Starr and others. It was said that he had hired farmhands to help with the harvest, when payday came, he murder them and dumped their bodies in the river. After the hurricane of 1910, Watson traveled to the Smallwood Store on Chokoloskee Island for supplies he was greeted by vigilantes and a hail of bullets, shot 33 times his body buried on Rabbit Key.
The corner piece of this large open camping area is the remains of a cistern, syrup kettle and other farm machinery.

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With the camp set I started dinner tonight’s fair would be Sloppy Joes and cottage potatoes. We finished dinner and walked out onto the dock to enjoying a cup of Earl Grey with honey, while watching the sunset on the Chatham River.

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FLP
Great trip post and love the photos!  I agree with Jimbo, almost makes it seem warmer up here in the north looking at that blue water and golden sand.  The Wilderness waterway appears to be much like what can be found on the west coast of Florida in the Charlotte Harbor to Sanibel areas and around Big Pine Key near Ft. Myers, where I have had an opportunity to paddle and camp on the little islands among the mangroves.  Have never had trouble with alligators but they are there, generally not large ones tho.  Great report!!  IC