“Look around. Who cares where we go? We’re in paradise. We work too hard and don’t play enough. Paddle away. And keep your eyes peeled. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” And she dipped her blade back in the water, reducing my fear of capsizing.
We had nearly reached the end of the mangroves when Bridgy commanded, “Oops, paddles up. Duck crossing.”
Kayak paddles barely disrupt the water, so kayakers could often get quite close to the bay’s natural inhabitants.
“Darn. I don’t have the nature book. Can’t check the species.”
Bridgy was quite forgiving. “Hey, we really aren’t on a nature trip. We’re looking for bigger game.” And she laughed at her own silliness. We sat still watching a brown and white mama duck lead her ducklings from the shade of one black mangrove tree across the waterway to another. The mama swam a deliberate route, going far wide of the trees, to keep her babies from getting tangled in the maze of roots.
As soon as the ducks were safely out of our path, we swung out into Estero Bay. We’d entered the bay forty or fifty yards south of the northernmost tip of the island, Bowditch Point, where the salty water of the Gulf of Mexico started to become brackish as it flowed into the bay and met the inflow of freshwater creeks and rivers.
I have to confess that as much as I adore the beachy atmosphere of the Gulf side of the island, with its miles of pristine sand dotted with umbrellas, beach chairs, volleyball nets and the occasional outdoor bar, it can’t compare to the freedom of skimming along on a kayak in the bay.
Bridgy suggested we paddle up to the bridge that connected Estero Island to San Carlos Island. Called Matanzas Pass, it was the narrowest waterway on the bay side of Estero Island, and once we were there, we could steal a quick look into canals and inlets, in the hopes of finding Skully or at least his canoe.
“Ryan told me the canoe was green with black buoyancy barrels held by rope on both sides. Should be easy to spot, right?”
“Only if he’s here, Bridg, only if he’s here. Didn’t you hear Ryan explain to Rowena? Skully travels up and down the coast from island to island for no purpose I can determine, but it is his life and his work. Who’s to say he’s not halfway to the Keys by now?”
“Don’t be such a Debbie Downer. It’s a fabulous day. And looking for Skully gives us an excuse to hang out with the ducks and, oh look, is that the, what’s it called, the poisonous stingray we learned about at the library seminar on ‘what to stay away from in the water’?”
Naturally, she lifted her paddle so she could point, and I had to scramble for balance, not wanting to go splat on top of a poison fish. An extremely large diamond-shaped fish swam alongside our kayak. It was dark with light spots, and I remembered the slide presentation immediately. I could even see the name in the lower left corner of the picture of a brown fish with yellow-white spots.
“Spotted eagle ray. And it’s dangerous if approached, but not aggressive, as I recall.”
Bridgy turned and looked at me in alarm. We pulled our paddles out of the water as quietly as we could and sat waiting until our new friend was well out of sight.
We crossed under the bridge and continued to paddle for another couple of hundred yards farther along the coast. It didn’t take long for us to realize that we were getting tired, it was getting late and there was no sign of Skully or his canoe.
We stopped to admire a flock of great white herons high above our heads. If Skully was anywhere to be seen, the herons were high enough and circling wide enough to see him. But those of us in the kayak gliding along the water were plain out of luck. So we turned and headed back to Bowditch Point.
When we got to the basin we jumped out and pulled the kayak completely onto dry land, then we removed our gear and placed the paddles across the boat, the same way we’d found them.