Off Three Rooker sand bar

[Awfeith]

Anchored in 5 feet of water off Three Rooker sand bar in the Gulf, on a perfect day. Gulf water temp is close to 90F.

André

[HideAway]

Wow!   Where is everybody?  Last time we went on a weekend the beach was lined with power boats.  We usually  anchor much closer and further south - keeping an eye on the tide and current.  Beautiful place to spend some time.  M

[HenryC]

I used to sail St Joseph's Sound and Anclote Anchorage quite a bit in the mid-70s, in my San Francisco Pelican.  Three Rooker Bar didn't exist then, I had never even heard that name, although it was a charted shoal avoided by large boats, no vegetation, and only totally dry at the lowest tides on days with no wave action.  I spent a night there once, there wasn't enough breeze to get us to Anclote Key.  The boat was ready to go in a heartbeat if the weather kicked up;  we slept on a tarp spread on the sand.  It couldn't have been more than 50' across.   

I remember that trip because we had some oysters and lemons on board, and a mullet skiff that came by in the morning shared part of his catch with us. We ate it all wrapped in tinfoil and layed on charcoal briquettes. Fresh seafood for breakfast!

I've been monitoring the changes there, and on Anclote Key farther north, using Google Earth and other internet tools.  It is remarkable how that coastline is constantly changing.  I would like to see a movie of it where each frame was a photograph taken a a day apart. 

This planet is alive, we just live too fast  to notice it.

The small craft chart for that area at the time was called "St Joseph's Sound to Anclote Anchorage", and near the southern end was marked a spot labeled "Boil" just a few hundred feet offshore.  I don't remember exactly where, it was a long time ago.  The boil was a fresh water spring in the Gulf of Mexico, in about ten feet or so of water, although I could sound no bottom there with my leadline. Since it was charted, it was well-known. If its still there no doubt one of you guys may be familiar with it.

It was a spooky place, the water was always glassy and smooth there, the chop broke all around it.  The water tasted fresh, too, or at least freshER than the surrounding sea, its hard to say how much it was so, and how much I've made up.  They say offshore springs like this used to dot the Gulf Coast, and Spanish galleons could refill their water barrels without having to go ashore. 

I can't swear that's true, but it should be.  That's a magic coast.

[HideAway]

I ve not heard of a boil there but I know of one in the Gulfport marina right behind a friends boat.  Manatees seem to know   
about it too.   

Todays paper has a story about a man who drowned Tuesday at Three Rooker.  He was in chest deep water setting his anchor when his dog jumped off the boat and was swept away by the current.  The owner went after the dog but did not make it.  A boater threw a ring for him but he could not hold on.  Another man who tried to help ended up in the hospital.  The area is very beautiful  but you really have to be aware of your surroundings and how quickly they change. 

[Awfeith]

Thanks for the great history lesson. I only know it since 1999. As you have noticed it is quite large now, about 1.5 miles long. It is now a registered bird sanctuary, no dogs, alcohol, overnight camping is allowed. Most weekends, it is packed with power boats backed up to the beaches. We were lucky to find a deserted spot! Our spring rendezvous included a night there. Bugs drove everyone crazy. If you ever get back this way, give me a shout and we'll take you out there. It's really nice in winter, no power boats, also too cold to swim. Our next trip out, I'll post more photos.  André

[HenryC]

More Anclote history.

"A night on Anclote Key:

http://www.goodoldboat.com/newsletter/febnewslett28.html#night

I may have posted this here before, it is also from Good Old Boat...

On St. Joseph's Sound

In fall and winter, after a cold front blows through the Gulf, the wind shifts northwest.  It's a long fetch from Texas to the Florida coast and the seas get as high as they ever get here--except when there is a hurricane offshore.  With a thousand miles of deep water to cross and a constant wind behind them, the big rollers build up until they feel the tug of the shelf that extends seaward, from the surf line out to where the water gradually darkens from green to aqua and finally to inky blue.  The drag of the sandy bottom on the big ones distorts and bends them but they stay together somehow until they dash themselves in a frenzy against the beach. On days like this, when the weather turns cold and the cloudless sky darkens to the most remarkable and unexpected blue, the sea shimmers a pale green from the sand kicked up by the surf while the whitecaps stretch out to the far horizon.

This is the best time to sail to the key, when the wind and cold and chop drive the power boats off Anclote Anchorage and the weather, although stiff, can be guaranteed to only get milder over the next few days.  My friend and I know this.  After the thunderstorms that mark the front's passage rush away to the southeast we are ready and have the boat packed; by early morning it is off the trailer and rigged and we are underway.  The Pelican is small but designed precisely for this sort of adventure, strong, roomy and overbuilt.  On the typical mild day on the Gulf coast she is slow and sluggish but in conditions like this she comes alive and is in her element.  Just right for a crew of two, the lug-rigged cat sloop is perfect for the day: solid, dependable, and with plenty of room to carry all the additional gear safety and prudence demands we have with us on a trip like this.  Where we are going there will not likely be anyone else and we need to be self-sufficient.

Anclote Key is four miles offshore, an uphill slog all the way, directly to windward. To round the southern tip as is our plan requires a series of alternating long and short tacks into wind and chop.  The continuous glistening spray soon drenches the boat and its contents.  The crew, in spite of the generous sun, is warmly dressed, foulies over sweaters;  but the water falls everywhere, sloshing back and forth in the bilge, dripping off the sails and rigging.  Wind and water are cold and the first leg of the trip will take several hours of hard beating to windward. A swift current in the Sound and the boat's flat bottom work against us; leeway pushes us south so we must tack often.  My shipmate and I have been doing this for a long time so scarcely a word is required between us; the maneuvers are crisp and efficient and the boat drives on like a locomotive, with sails full and lines taut, pounding into the chop with a bone in her teeth.  Slowly but inevitably, we claw our way upwind. 

On gentler days the shallow water is clear; plainly visible through it are great patches of turtle grass separated by stretches of white sand.  In season, clouds of scallops scatter as the boat approaches, like wind-up comic dentures swimming through the transparent water.  Sometimes porpoises follow the boat, often leaping alongside it, and in their time the stingrays scurry across the bottom out of our way.  But not today.  When the nor'wester blows, the sea floor is turbid and the surface a tangle of ripples and foam and whitecaps.  The boat is a living thing, crashing through the waves like a wild horse through tall grass; spray leaps off the blunt bow and rains in sheets on and about us. As Pelican heels hard to leeward the crew leans to weather;  the helmsman looks forward and is soon drenched, but the man handling the jib stands facing aft, his back to the spray.  Periodically, we change places.  Conversation is possible, but soon we are hoarse from shouting over the wind and splash and the pounding of the boat.  For long stretches we just do our jobs, the tillerman concentrating on rudder and mainsail trim, the man up forward minding the jib sheets. Our eyes move from the straining rig to the angle of the wind, invisible, but we can sense exactly where it is.  If we keep the boat perfectly balanced on that edge, the voyage will be over much sooner.  Pelican responds, a machine in tune and in harmony with her human cargo and the sea around us; under our control, but allowing us to do what we could never accomplish without her.

By lunchtime we have reached the southern end of the island.  We give it a wide berth, there is a tangle of shoals and channels and confused currents there that on another day we might thread our way through, perhaps to camp on the beach for a long fishing weekend.  But not now, this is a day sail and we round the southern tip, gulp down a sandwich, a candy bar and a drink and turn across the wind and steer north, parallel to the long weather side of the island.  We are cold and wet but the sun is higher now and the food warms us up.  Conditions are a little better too, the waves are rollers here in deeper water and the chop is not quite as bad: soon the slickers come off.  We're on a port tack now and we only come about when the leeway pushes us too close to shore--that turbulent cauldron of surf is no place for a small boat.  It is ironic, this boat and crew are only in real danger if they get too close to land.

The trip along the length of the three mile long island is the mirror image of the sail from the boat ramp.  Now we have the wind to port, an invisible wall we slide against, as close as we dare get before it before it begins to slow us down.  The little boat, despite it's deep wide centerboard, loses ground continuously to leeward towards the churning shore and we periodically have to tack and beat out to deeper water before we can come about and resume our course parallel to the beach.  Ironically, during these short detours we are losing ground, traveling further from our destination.  It's just part of the charm of sailing, I guess.

The sail north lets us get a good look at Anclote Key, a long thin sandbar with a glorious sandy beach and a spine of palms and scrub down the middle; there is a mangrove swamp on the lee side, but we cannot see it from here and the sand sparkles white and featureless except for the lines of weed and spindrift deposited there by the falling tide. On it the surf beats mercilessly, these days of heavy waves are infrequent and tomorrow the outline of the coast will be visibly altered.  The key is a living thing, over a period of years we've seen it change and move and writhe along the surface of the sea.  My friend and I have often remarked how fascinating a stop-action movie of the island might be, one frame taken every day over a century then all played back in a few minutes.  The island would wriggle like an eel and swim down the Sound.  Everything is alive out here, just at different time scales.

We pass familiar landmarks, the automated lighthouse and the old wrecked shrimpboat, only her pilot house now visible above the sand.  There is a new wreck too, a lovely yacht, her spine broken irreparably high up on the beach, her mast pointing to sea, parallel to the ground; the sand is littered with debris. A quick look through the binoculars shows she has been there for some time; scavengers have already stripped her expensive deck hardware. Almost as if we had unexpectedly stumbled across the corpse of a beautiful young woman, it shocks us, then breaks our heart.  She was certainly a stranger to these waters and in the dark her skipper probably mistook the lights of the tall smokestack on the mainland for the lighthouse.  The island is so low you can't see it at night and they probably sailed her right up on the beach. We hope her crew got off all right. 

It takes us hours to sail down the length of the island.  At the northern end, sportsmen and even professional fishermen rarely visit; there are no ports to speak of for miles further north and the mudflats and oyster bars up the coast are unfriendly to small craft.  We find the deep channel between the end of the key and the sand flats and make our turn.  The wind behind us now, sailing becomes a little easier so I kick up the centerboard to let us scoot through the shallows, leaving it down just far enough to warn us if we're running into shoal water.  Traveling with the wind, the impression is that it has suddenly dropped to a gentle breeze--not really, we're just moving with it.  My crewman stands on the foredeck with his trusty Polaroids and helps me pick our way through the shoals.  The water is only a few feet deep but we're a small boat so it presents no threat, we can always jump out and push.  Offshore, the big rollers crash into a long sandbar so we are protected and we know the hardest part of the trip is over.  After clearing the tip of the island we turn south, with the wind behind us we glide parallel to the edge of the land along the mangrove thicket that extends the length of the bay side.

The whole character of our world suddenly changes, the wind, blocked by the land and the thick mangrove forest, dies down to the gentlest of breezes.  The water is flat and serene, clear as glass, and the Pelican ghosts along quietly in less than two feet of water. We strip off our wet clothes, change into dry ones, and have another snack.  My friend lights up his pipe for the first time all day, relaxes and enjoys the view, the lazy smoke from its bowl drifting along with us.  It is late afternoon now and the thick mangrove passing to starboard has a primeval, prehistoric look to it.  The sun low in the sky and behind the vegetation; Pelican silently drifts along in shadow, sails limp and barely pulling.  It is quiet and peaceful but the mangroves, menacing and impenetrable, are only yards away.  Beneath the boat is a slimy fine mud, almost quicksand, and the mangrove is as interlocked and tangled as the Devil's own basket; even a man with an axe could not hack his way through it.  We are comfortable and relaxed, but without the boat around us this meeting place of land and sea is as inhospitable to us as the crashing surf on the weather side of the island.  The wind is muted, but there's enough to keep the salt water marsh mosquitoes down.  In a few days the crop of wrigglers hatched after yesterday's rain will make this stretch of water a living hell.  We have our rods and had planned to try for snook and snapper here, but we are both too tired and without a word decide to save it for another day.

The island passes slowly by and we use the time to bail the bilge and secure the loose gear that came adrift from the almost continuous pounding we had been in all day.  We discuss cutting our cruise short and setting a course back to Tarpon Springs and the boat ramp: the chart is consulted and a compass bearing laid out.  It is almost night now and most of the long trip back will be in the dark.  But Anclote Key has one more show to put on for us, one final act. 

Out of nowhere, a school of mullet has materialized.  Between us and the shore, the fish seem agitated, nervous, individuals are jumping and the school rushes about like a single panicked creature.  We soon see why. A small shark has appeared, four or five feet long, perhaps a young bull or lemon, it is hard to tell in the dim light.  Only the dorsal fin can be seen slicing the flat, still water, and an occasional glimpse of tail.  The predator dashes through the mullet, zig and zagging while its foot-long prey scatter to confuse and avoid the assault.  As he passes, they reassemble into a tight knot of swimmers, almost touching each other, and the shark circles back, again and again.  The running battle continues, gradually moving south along the tangled mangrove roots where the prey huddle as best they can.  By coincidence, the skirmish is moving along at about the same speed we are and for long minutes we follow and watch, transfixed.  The battle continues until it is almost too dark to see and suddenly it is over as quickly as it began.  Have the mullet scattered and headed for deeper water?  Has the shark fed to satisfaction? We do not know, but it is over.

It is time to go. We turn away from the mangrove and head southeast into deeper water.
It is dark now and the distant lights of Tarpon Springs are winking on, our little boat picks up speed as we depart the lee of the island and pick up the northwest breeze again.  This time the wind is on our quarter, the ideal point of sail, and traveling with it our speed is subtracted from the wind's to make what we feel aboard much more moderate.  The seas too are now coming up behind us and rather than crashing through we lift our stern to them so they slide effortlessly beneath us to pass ahead.  It's a gentler ride and a dry one, even with the quickly dropping temperature we are comfortable.  The law tells us our boat is not long enough to require running lights, but we each have flashlights ready to locate gear or to shine on the sail if another boat comes near.  But we have little need of them except for an occasional flash at the compass to ensure we are still on course for home.  The sky quickly turns black and a blaze of stars appears overhead as they are never seen from the city.  It is still almost two hours before we get back to the ramp and the bowl of night embraces us; while astern, a long trail of phosphorescence, unearthly green-glowing plankton, marks our wake, a ghostly road in the sea.  We settle down for a long ride, dreading the chore of putting the boat on the trailer, the clean-up, and the long drive back to Tampa. I sip at the last of the lukewarm coffee from the Thermos and my shipmate lights his pipe and remarks that throughout the entire day we have not seen even one other boat. 

[bob lamb]

Another great read Henry. Have you ever anchored overnight on the beach side of Anclote?  Do you ever get back to this area?

[HenryC]

No, I never anchor on the weather side of an island, unless 1) conditions are perfect, 2) I am only going to be there for a a few hours at most, and 3) I will be in continuous sight of the boat. 

Since I didn't have a kicker on the Pelican, I was paranoid about getting caught off a lee shore in heavy surf, especially if I was sailing with green crew.

I used to camp out there all the time, but I anchored my boat in the mangroves on the east side of the island at the southern end.   There was a hook of land there that protected the boat on three sides.  Unfortunately, it was very shallow and only a flat-bottom swing keel boat like the Pelican could get in and out easily.

I used to go there all the time from '75-'77, but when I left Florida in '77 I sold the Pelican.  I visited Anclote about 5 years later, with my old sailing buddy, Boat Bob, on his boat.  I was visiting my folks in Tampa and I wanted to show the island to my
new bride.

Here is an article I wrote for Florida Wildlife magazine based on my Anclote camping experiences:

Dinghy Camping
by Henry Cordova

The backpacker faces a constant dilemma: every item he takes with him into the bush has the potential of adding to his comfort and safety but it also increases the load he must bear.  There is a constant conflict as to whether the utility of an object makes up for the fact it has to be carried on one's back.  The wilderness experience does imply giving up some comforts and taking some risks, but if it becomes either a minimalist struggle for survival or a labor of Hercules, then it may soon be abandoned altogether or substituted by a mechanically assisted air-conditioned technological expedition in some lavishly equipped vehicle.  This isn't camping, it's space travel. There must be a better way.

My compromise is dinghy camping.  I can carry more on a small boat that I can lift so there are some additional conveniences and supplies that can be brought along to make life easier in the wilderness.  But you are still camping--I would loosely define a "dinghy" as a boat too small to sleep on.  It is the nautical equivalent of a two-seater roadster or a motorcycle with a sidecar. A dinghy can carry at most a few people but it can go places you can't get to on foot or in any form of motorized land transport.  It might be oar, sail, power, or any combination; it is any boat that can take you to a wilderness campsite but still be small enough that you can pull it temporarily on the beach or anchor in water shallow enough to wade ashore.  Under this definition even the old Native American standard, the canoe, can qualify as a dinghy. 

Somewhere near you is a body of water and a campsite suitable for your boat, be it a reservoir, river, lake, or the sea.  Of course, away from inland waters your boat must have some measure of seaworthiness but how much is up to you to decide depending on your craft, your skills and your cruising grounds.  Just remember you will be on your own and as in any wilderness experience things can go wrong; no matter how well prepared you are you can always be overwhelmed.  Be careful and use common sense.  This article was composed with my own boat and home waters as a model but I suspect much of what we cover here can be applied to your situation.

My dinghy was a San Francisco Pelican, a 12 foot flat-bottomed centerboard cat-rigged lugger originally designed for use on windy San Francisco Bay.  It was a small boat but ruggedly built, very roomy and capable of carrying four and minimal camping gear for a weekend or a week's supplies for two. It was also seaworthy enough that I had the confidence to travel considerable distances offshore or along the coast and the carrying capacity to take whatever I needed to remote and lonely places. There was no auxiliary outboard so canoe paddles provided emergency propulsion.  My Pelican was a long way from home. I sailed her on the Florida Gulf Coast where bays, inlets, islands and sand bars, as well as estuaries and beaches, provided an infinite variety of secluded spots inaccessible by any other means.  And in the spirit of the true pocket cruiser, this vessel could be trailered to the water's edge hitched behind a compact car. In this era of limited and diminishing facilities for recreational boaters and high fuel costs, this can make all the difference.

When looking for potential camp sites consult the charts for your area and select spots that can be conveniently reached from where you launch your boat. Scrutinize the waters and the approaches to your destinations for potential harbors and hazards as well as aids to navigation. In many cases, Google Earth software can provide GPS waypoints and a preliminary aerial reconnaissance to evalute a potential site. Determine alternate options in case you run into trouble or even if you just change your mind--always have a Plan B.  Nautical charts can suggest worthwhile destinations, too; in my cruising ground a remote Indian mound and an offshore freshwater spring were both clearly marked on the charts of the area; both were fascinating spots to visit and pretty much unknown to most boaters in the area.

Until you learn your way around contact the authorities about camping regulations on public lands and always respect others' property rights.  Keep in mind your boat's strengths and weaknesses; for example, I knew I could take my Pelican into shallow water where deeper draft vessels could not follow.  This usually got me some choice campsites all to myself.  At the same time I avoided areas that were too well sheltered and far from open water and the dependable day land and night sea breezes I relied on.  My boat was clumsy under oars so I stayed away from places where I was likely to be becalmed or neaped (forced aground for long periods by an unusual combination of high and low tides).  My mast was low but there were some bridges I still could not clear without unstepping it.  Of course, in any boat, knowledge of the seasonal weather patterns in your area is critical as well as the short-term forecast.  Make sure you are familiar with your marine environment, too, and the rising and setting times of the sun and phases of the moon--you are going into the real world now,  these facts can save your life.  Buy up-to-date charts and get access to almanacs, tide and current tables, coast pilots, light lists and other publications and learn how to use them.  Your local marine store can advise you and much information is available on the internet.  There are also numerous recreational boating guides and regional sailing directions on the market with invaluable information for cruisers and sportsmen.  You'll find planning your trips almost as much fun as taking them!

The hand-held GPS and the cell phone are very recent inventions, people got along fine without them for thousands of years but it is difficult to visualize more vital safety gear today.  One should not rely on either, they are mechanical and prone to failure, but it would be irresponsible to go out on the water without them now no matter how skilled a sailor you may be; together, they simultaneously solve the problems of navigation and emergency communications. A battery operated portable radio will also provide essential weather forecasts.  However, none of these is an excuse to fail to learn the fundamentals of small boat navigation.  Without some knowledge of piloting, dead reckoning, basic compass and chart work, plus understanding of the rules of the road and aids to navigation, you may become overly reliant on a piece of equipment you do not fully understand.  If you lose it or it malfunctions you will not have a clue as to what to do to find your way home.  Even if it is working perfectly, if you don't have complete faith in your equipment it is useless:  they tell aviators to trust their instruments and so should you.  The confidence you achieve when you verify a GPS position with basic piloting and coastal navigation techniques(or vice-versa) is truly priceless. The bare minimum you need in the way of traditional navigation gear is a chart of the area, a pair of binoculars, parallel rulers and dividers and two good, well-adjusted magnetic compasses, one for steering and one for shooting bearings.  If you don't know what "shooting a bearing" is, or how to plot a fix on a chart or lay out a dead reckoning track, you're not ready to solo yet. Read up on the subject or find someone to teach you, it's a lot easier than you think.

So you are ready.  You know where you're going, you know what you're doing, and you have all the equipment you need for safe operation of your craft.  You have fuel, tools and spare parts and your boat is legal with all the proper safety equipment required by the Coasties.  So what do you take with you?  Food and water, of course, at least twice as much as you expect you'll consume, and plenty of dry clothing and bedding.  Always take more than you need of everything (you may not be able to return when you want to) and pack everything in waterproof containers. make sure they are all light enough to float (don't fill your water jugs all the way up).   Being prepared only sounds like common sense but I've rescued more than one family stranded with a dead motor on a barrier island or an isolated beach.  After a day and a night they were in bad shape: hungry, thirsty, shivering with cold, covered with mosquito bites and terribly sunburned.  It is not a pretty sight, and for young children it could prove fatal.  This is a wilderness even though you may be within sight of civilization, without your equipment and your boat you might as well be in the Amazon or the Outback; that is why you are there and casual visitors often forget that. An offshore sandbar can be a crowded vacation spot on a Sunday afternoon; on Monday morning it can be a lonely and remote place. Depending on the weather or wildlife in your area different survival items may come in handy.  In Florida, I found hats, sunglasses, sunblock lotion, bug spray and insect repellant essential.  Important enough, in fact, that I usually carried a backup for each.

Chances are that you won't be camping within sight of your boat so one thing you should be ready to invest in is a good anchor and suitable ground tackle for the common types of holding ground in your area.  The shores of Florida are predominantly sand but you may have to deal with turtle grass, mud, shell, coral or oyster bars; fortunately, rocky botoms are relatively rare here.  Talk to people with local knowledge and take their advice. Don't skimp, use stout line recommended for anchoring, a good length of chain to weigh down the line, or rode, and first-rate shackles and swivels to hold it all together.  Always secure your boat in the most protected spot you can find even if it means carrying your camping gear a long way to where you will set up your tent.  Set your hook by hand and make sure it's well dug in even if you have to get wet, consider how the boat may swing as wind and tide shift and be ready to use two anchors or a backup mooring to a tree on shore, if necessary.  There is nothing more demoralizing than returning to your boat only to find it nowhere in sight.  One trick is to rig one anchor with a sentinel (a weight which can be lowered down the rode to help keep it on the bottom) and another with a float (to keep its rode off the bottom).  This prevents the two lines from fouling each other or their anchors if the vessel is dancing around in a blow.  Whole books have been written on the art of anchoring, it is a subject worth studying if you plan to be away from your boat all night and the weather kicks up. A dinghy can often be simply carried out of the water, or beached.  Do so if you can but tie up or set an anchor anyway in case the tide rises.  Never, ever, anchor on the weather side of an island or on an exposed beach, no matter how quiet the sea is.  An unattended boat suddenly finding itself in heavy surf is almost certain to be lost.

Once ashore the outdoorsman's skills the backpacker relies on come into play.  The small-craft cruiser will probably be better supplied and equipped but he is now separated from his vessel and in the domain of the woodsman.  I will make one suggestion: a folding lawn chair, the kind made of aluminum tubing and plastic straps, can be a very welcome luxury.  It is light and folds up so it is easy to pack but it is a welcome alternative to squatting or sitting on the ground, especially around a campfire when one is invariably getting up to take care of small chores.  In most areas setting up a tent is a routine task but on Florida's sandy beaches I often found tent pegs to be useless.  To anchor a small tent on loose sand I suggest that the pegs be replaced by small 3"x3" plywood or plastic squares (like those that come on the ends of rolls of drafting film).  Set up your tent, and instead of hammering in the pegs to keep the tent ropes taught, bury the squares about 8" deep under the sand.  A small hole drilled in the center of each allows the tent line to pass through where the peg can be tied to it to prevent the line from slipping back through the hole.  With the pad buried deep in the sand (pour a little water in the hole to help make the sand gummy and hard) that pad cannot pull out, even in a full gale.  The tent will rip first.  I have had this rig survive several Florida thunderstorms on an exposed sandy beach.  It's a scary ride but it if you have a good tent it will not be swept away.  A garden trowel and a toy plastic bucket come in handy for this and also provide a convenient place to store the plastic pads and pegs and other items you will need to secure your tent. Incidentally, when setting up your shelter orient it so the prevailing wind will blow in the open end and out the back window.  This will keep the tent "inflated" and roomy and the breeze will provide a cool draft during the night.  In Florida's superhot summer and shadeless beaches I also learned to rig a temporary lean-to or tarp over  the tent to provide shade and keep it cool in case I wanted to duck inside for a nap or to eat a meal in the shade. It can be put away after dark.  A pup tent in the hot sun can become an oven in minutes so when selecting your shelter pick a color that will reflect sunlight but will also be easily visible from the air--just in case. Make sure your tent is pitched above the high water mark, too!  Meanwhile, your clothes, food and fuel will be outside, but safe from weather, bugs and sand in their waterproof containers.

Florida mosquitoes, especially the salt-water marsh variety, can become a big problem after dark. Make sure your tent is fully rigged before sunset, and I would suggest keeping a wide mouth jar inside for storing liquid waste during the night until it can be disposed of in the morning.  Leaving your shelter for even a moment will let legions of the creatures in when you undo the netting, they are guaranteed to keep you miserable all night.  If some do get in use a flashlight to locate and dispatch them before you go to sleep.  They tend to like to rest on the interior of the tent fabric and are easy to spot.  The dreaded no-see-ums easily fit through the holes in mosquito netting but I have found spraying the screen doors and windows with insecticide (from the inside of your tent) will help drive them off.  A fresh water sponge bath before you retire for the evening, clean clothes, and a light spray with repellent will discourage the few that do get through. Outside, your caches of food and clothing are in stout plastic, so they should be safe from most marauding woodland creatures and inclement weather.  Florida beaches are often patrolled by the wily raccoon so take appropriate precautions with your provisions.  These guys have a remarkable sense of smell, and they are a lot stronger than they look, all food items should be kept in tough, airtight containers. Weigh the lighter parcels down with the heavier ones so they don't blow away in a gale.

With a good boat and increasing confidence the dinghy camper will be able to expand both his range and the challenge of his cruises, traveling further and staying longer in increasingly wilder and more remote environments.  And it need not be a grueling wilderness ordeal either, a few days fishing on a spoil island by the shipping channel in a large harbor can still be a fascinating and relaxing experience, watching the ships from all over the world and the fishermen coming home from the sea.  Dinghy cruising is a great way to enhance your skills as an outdoorsman and a mariner, provide you with exquisite fishing, snorkeling and birdwatching adventures and turn any long weekend into an economical mini-vacation.  It's amazing how long two or three days seem to last when you're away from your usual routine, and after the second or third you get acclimated to roughing it and you won't want to go back!  As you get better at it you will learn to pack and prepare great meals, much better than you could carry in on your back.  And with your camp and supplies set up on some central location, it will give you an advance base to explore a more extensive wilderness area with your boat. Florida has a lot of coastline, and many secret places;  and they have changed very little since the days the Spanish Conquistadors first waded ashore in their rusty armor.