We have the kayak on the water before the actual sunrise. Florida in the summertime is not very hospitable to kayakers because of the sudden thunderstorms you have to deal with. You can wake up to beautiful weather at 6AM but get thunderstorms by 9AM on some days. It is not the rain as that feels good on a 90 degree plus day, but we have a large amount of lightning we get each year in Florida and it does kill people. With this pink, glassy start to the day, you can't expect we will be running for the van within three hours on this day.

It does not appear foggy to the eye as we leave the drop, but the camera sees the sea fog as we look towards a freighter sailing up Tampa Bay. I still admire in wonder as huge ocean going vessels are sailing less than a mile from my kayak in this skinny water.

The Florida sun is just about to come up as we look back from the kayak towards the Cockroach Bay ramp.

Sunrise over the Florida mangroves in Cockroach Bay. I see a lot of sunsets, but not too many sunrises, except in the summertime, when we are trying to beat the rain.

Thousands of acres of mangroves protected with motor exclusion zones make this the perfect kayak paddling place near my house.

Picture of the Cockroach Bay mangroves in Hillsborough County Florida. Not yet 8AM on Florida's West Coast and the clouds are already stacking up over St. Petersburg, Florida. This day will be cut short as we begin to hear thunder off in the distance.

Not much activity on the water this morning. I guess everybody else is sleeping in given the large amount of rain we have had this summer. We did have an interesting experience with medium sized bull dolphin we saw on the way back to the launch. We stopped to watch him feed in less than 2 feet of water and he popped his head up to see what we were. Just about that time, we heard a larger thunderclap and started heading home quickly. When we took off, the dolphin decided to race the kayak but we were all in 2 feet of water so we could see his back the whole time. When we started paddling hard to get away from the rain, the dolphin took it as a race and started swimming faster along side the kayak all the way up the back channel between the mangroves. He kept poking his head out of the water as if to say, is that as fast as you can go as we were breaking a sweat and he was gliding along effortlessly. At one point in a small bay near the launch site, he poked up one more time to say goodby and want down another channel looking for breakfast in the high tide. Cockroach Bay is a great launch on a day where you are not sure about the weather as you are never more than 10 or 15 minutes from the launch even though you can spend two or three hours doing the loop. Also, pay attention to tides as the water flow is pretty strong and the paddling is easier if you ride the tide into the backcountry and ride it out again rather than paddling against the tide.

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