Cape Romano Dome Houses

This past holiday season, my daughter Lauren who was with me on our first blogged trip in the spring of '13 at Islamorada in the Florida Keys made it clear that in addition to all the usual holiday stuff she wanted to do an island adventure with Gertie and Bernie before she returned to the nasty weather in Chicago.  Rightly so as it turns out.  Lauren lives on the shore of Lake Michigan and it has been reported that record low temperatures there this January exceeded even those of the South Pole.  We can blame it on Canada or Global Warming, whichever floats your boat. 

Lauren was thirteen when she and her sister Vanessa accompanied me on her first independent Gunkhole adventure which was a 150 mile round trip to the mouth of Catskill Creek NY on the Hudson River in our Catalina 22 sailboat.  We "putt-putted" against the strong north wind and the current all the way there with our 8 hp Johnson outboard.  In addition to the spectacular scenery, we remember fondly our evening group reading of RIP VAN WINKLE in the town where he woke up 20 years after he went to sleep.

I chose this relatively easy trip just south of Marco and Kice islands which are among the most northerly of the Ten Thousand Islands, because I wanted her to see something special...the infamous Cape Romano Dome Houses. I have made similar trips 3 or 4 times in the past four years in various craft including an Irwin 28 and with and without company.  My son Drew accompanied me on a "Fakawi" trip for Fathers' Day in 2012 during which we towed our Pelican double kayak behind the yet to be named Gheenoe who after a motor makeover eventually became Gertie.  This turned out to be a good thing as we ended up towing the good  for nothing no-name Gheenoe back to Caxambas by using the kayak as the tow vehicle.  We also hitched a ride for a few miles behind a Carolina Skiff and then sailed a bit using a parachute beach blanket for a spinnaker.  Since then, I've invested in a BoatUSA membership which is kind of like a AAA for boats and they provide towing services.  Generally I find that the water, the mudflats and oyster banks and sandbars and inlets (called "Passes" here) are different every time.   They don't call them "shifting sands" for nothing and depending on the wind and the tide, I have used different routes.  As a result, even though the destination may be the same, the trip itself is always different.  As well the passes in and out to the gulf from the various inland rivers and sounds and bays are here today and gone tomorrow.  On a kayak trip to Blind Pass (which divides Kice Island from Cape Romano Island), I was able to explore deep inside the center of Kice where even Gertie couldn't go at low tide. Kice Island is something of a phenomenon.  But for a complicated environmental court settlement in 1982, it would have been bridged over from Marco Island and its two miles of beaches would have been shoulder to shoulder condo's as a twin development of its big brother Marco to the north.  As it is Kice was never platted for development and 4,000 acres are there to share among the osprey, whales, dolphins, manatees, kayakers, shellers, fishermen, commercial jet ski tours and a few odd ball gunkholers.  . 

Bernie at Blind Pass in 2012 in the general vicinity of where 25 dead pilot whales were washed ashore in January 2014.  Local news story on dead pilot whales

Lauren's first sighting of the Dome Houses 

These are the first videos we shot with the new Sony HDR-AS15 (already obsolete but the price was right...thanks Vanessa) and for whatever reason one of them won't upload to the blog site so I am linking you to YouTube where they are posted and doing fine.  They are quite  amateurish, but that's what I am,  so seems fair enough until I get the hang of this.  Since this outing I ordered a head band and with the waterproof case I hope to be able to do hands free video when I explore the Indian shell mound of Dismal Key.  I store the camera in a Crown Royal Bag inside of an ammo case. 

The Dome Houses Up Close

Gertie usually doesn't go out into big open water but the conditions were right this day so here we are, out in the Gulf of Mexico in a 13 foot canoe like craft.  As I was concerned about  getting pooped by the building following seas on the return leg, we kind of rushed the video so I could get back to Morgan Pass and into protected water.  As it turned out we only had to surf inadvertently a couple of times ( I really hate that feeling) and thus went all the way up to Blind Pass and cut back east from there as you can see on the accompanying map above.

 

Unlike Kice, Cape Romano, immediately to the south was okayed for development and there are private, property tax owing land-owners there to this day, who are unable to build or otherwise fulfill their fantasies of owning an island paradise.  One guy even dredged a canal from Morgan Bay straight south to the beach to dock his boat behind the house which of course he was never able to build.  He did build a tent platform and a dock which are duly noted on the tax maps as "improvements" and taxed accordingly.  Most of the taxes due are minimal or in arrears it would seem and as each land-owner finally succumbs to the pressure, an environmental agency steps in to take it off their hands. Most of the lots on the west side are completely underwater and owned by various government agencies.  At this rate I expect that Cape Romano Island will soon revert to the same wilderness status as Kice Island.  It would appear that the current owner of the Dome Houses has been facing this same pressure since he bought the place in 2005 for $300,000.  You'll have to ask him what he was thinking but he might have been thinking he wanted a beach house that looked like the one in the photo below.  These houses (rooms actually) were continually occupied from 1981 until 1992 when Hurricane Andrew permanently, as it turns out, put an end to living on these shifting sands.  It is said these houses were the length of a football field up on the sand when first built.  In 2010, I had to swim to shore in a strong tidal current and then walk up the beach to get to the houses.  In 2012, Drew and I kayaked under them and here you see them in 2013.  Talk about adding insult to injury, the poor fellow who owns these things has been fined $187,000 for not demolishing them as it has been charged and I assume adjudicated that the derelict buildings interfere with the sea turtles' nesting ability. 

Here's a link to a wonderful video from a local Marco paper that shows the property in various lights under different conditions.  http://youtu.be/CEk1o4KlzCk

 

 

Sea Turtle tracks on Keewaydin island beach.  You can clearly see the flipper marks on the outbound and inbound lanes and understand how these houses might get in the way.  If you look closely you will also see the beach patrol's ATV tracks cross them in the middle.

 

Thanks for reading and as always I hope you are able to find the gunkholer within.