January 23 Little Shark River

I have a dilemma. Judy and I want to go the Everglades City Museum and I also want to ride down the river on the bike and take some pictures of the flavor of the area all the while I am doing this, the tide is falling. There is approximately a 4' swing in the tide here. Low tide is at 10 am just about the time we planned to leave Everglades City. We waited until 11 am to leave. Remember we came in on a mid tide and now we are leaving at low tide so I was sure I was going to see 4' of water or less. True North was staying another day. As we left the River to travel the channel back out to the Gulf, I knew it was more important than ever to stay in the channel markers. It is easy for the current and the wind to carry you outside of the channel when the markers are some distance apart. As we lined up the next set of markers, Judy would look out the back and watch the markers we just left to make sure we are in the channel and quite often it was necessary to make a correction. Whenever we came to 5' of water or less I would slow down to idle speed. In one place we marked 3.5' of water and stirred up some sand and mud. I don't think we touched but it had to have been close. As we were in this shallow water, a tour boat came roaring buy and he was traveling closer to the red marker side of the channel. In hindsight I should have stopped and talked to a local captain before we left. After a few tense moments the channel deepened and we were on our way. Gypsy Time and Sun Cat left their anchorages ahead of us and they also encountered some skinny water. As I mentioned before, there is no civilization after Everglades City. Only alligators, Mangrove Trees, Mangrove islands and assorted other wildlife. Little Shark River to anchor would be our next stop on the way to the Keys. Gypsy Time and Sun Cat were already anchored in the River when we arrived with an assortment of other sailboats and one other power boat. The river is wide and the current is strong. I knew we would be doing an about face in the River as the tide changed. I let out all 100' of anchor chain. After a dinner of pork chops on the grill we settled in for the evening after being chased inside by the noseeums (very tiny mosquitoes)--really the first time we have had a serious problem with bugs of any sort. Most evenings we have left the doors open and we have not been bothered by insects of any kind even while leaving the lights on. Shortly after dusk, a dense fog settled in. We could barely see the anchor lights of the boats in front of us and definitely could not see the boats anchored behind us. As we turned in for the night, the boat began to turn 180 degrees and the anchored chain groaned as it strained against the bow pulpit. I arose several times during the night to make sure the current wasn't dragging us in the opposite direction. Looking at the GPS, which marks a trail of boat movement, I indeed saw that we were heading in the opposite direction and we had drug the length of the anchor chain, and the anchor had reset and was keeping us firmly in place. There are not actual land islands along the Little Shark River, just groves of Mangrove trees. The picture shows the other two looper boats anchored ahead of us. The other pictures show the Mangrove banks along the Little Shark River and the islands we traveled through when traveling to Everglades City.