You can see Scot's house using the coordinates above in Google Map or Google Earth.

On Thursday, we went over to Paradise Hang Gliding to see if we could do a little boat towing just off Hickory island (a Florida barrier island on the Gulf side) with Scot Trueblood. When you leave central Florida, or the Everglades and head either east or west to the coasts, people get a lot more common. But while Interstate 75 was closed further to the south in Alligator alley due to a fire, we could take it to Bonita Springs in relatively light traffic, an hour and a half from the Ridge.

Scott lives in a small house, out of which he runs his boat towing/hang gliding business, right on the mangrove estuaries on the west side of Hickory island. His boat is parked (and lifted out of the water) right next to his house. Here we (me and the crew) are next to the boat:

His boat is a parasailing boat made by Nordic specifically for the parasailing trade. The mast has been lowered to make it more applicable for hang glider towing (you can see it folded up in the picture). There is also a hang gliding specific payout winch at the bottom of the mast.

Scot backs the boat out of the channel about 100 feet, rotates the Falcon 3 around and clamps it down, then heads down the estuary to get to the channel just north of the island which allows him to get out to the Gulf of Mexico in about fifteen minutes. It is flat water in the estuary but it is too shallow for a boat except in the marked and dredged channel and Florida has a law against ultralights flying in the mangroves (even unpowered ones).

When we went out on Thursday it turned out that the waves in the Gulf were too high (4') for comfortable towing (and landing in the ocean), so we quickly turned around and came back. The winds were very light so it wasn't clear why the waves were so high. This would have been a perfect time for towing in the estuary.

Here is where Scot normally picks up his passengers and pilots.

Thanks to Scot for his generous support of the Oz Report.