1st trip in Porta-Bote

We left Daytona on Tuesday and drove to one of our favorite parks in Florida, Wilderness RV Park in Silver Springs, because we were wanting to try out the Porta-Bote on the Ocklawaha River. 

Donald and Anna followed us there and stayed for a few nights which was great because we got to  spend some more time with them and get some more cornhole and card games in.  And of course, we ate dinner at Sonny's Barbecue one night and a mexican restaurant the next night.  The Mexican restaurant had some unusual outdoor seating.

 

We were anxious to try out the Porta-Bote, so on Wednesday we took the Porta-Bote out for its maiden voyage.   Wilderness has a place where you can launch boats on the Ocklawaha River.  We put the boat together in the parking area near the launch and rolled it down to the boat launch.  (Our Porta-Bote had portable wheels that you could put on and take off the boat to make it easier to move around on land.)  Because the river was very low, we had to walk and lift the boat down a small hill with a lot of tree roots to a better spot to launch the boat.

We backed the boat into the water, Chuck got into the boat, and then I pushed us off and jumped in.  Chuck started rowing immediately but we weren't going anywhere.  In fact, we were going backwards. 

I started to panic because if we kept going backwards, we would miss the boat launch area and I knew there wouldn't place to get out for several miles.  We maneuvered the boat to a point where I could jump out with the rope on the shore.  I jumped out and when I looked back at Chuck in the boat, I noticed that we had forgotten to take the wheels off.  No wonder we weren't going anywhere!

Chuck took the wheels off and with me holding the rope, he practiced rowing the boat out in the river and felt like we could make some forward progress.  So I got back in the boat and we tried it again.

We saw a little alligator on the bank.

I thought, "this is going to be fun!"  And we both were looking forward to seeing other wildlife and the monkeys when we got to the Silver River.

The Ocklawaha River may have been down but the Silver River that feeds into it pumps about 550 million gallons of water out of its headsprings a day creating about a 3 - 5 mile current.  When you are rowing forwards (rather than backwards like you are supposed to in a rowboat), we found out real quick that you don't get very far. 

 

I moved to the front of the boat and got out our "emergency paddle" and started paddling from the boat to try to help us make some forward progress.  We finally made it to the underpass, which was only about 300 yards from where we had started.

We decided to try to go a little further...

 

....but when we saw the current coming from where the Silver River meets the Ocklawaha, we knew we would never make it up the Silver River.  Instead, we headed up the Ocklawaha where there was very little current.

 

There were a lot of cypress trees

 

and their knobby knees.

 

We tied off and ate a little lunch.

The water was not clear like the Silver River but the Ocklawaha was still pretty in its own way.

 

 

 

After finishing our lunch, we paddled back out of the Ocklawaha and when we reached where the Silver River meets the Ocklawaha, the current picked up and we were able to just about float all the way back to the boat launch.