Seven little islands in Santa Rosa Sound, afterthoughts of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredging projects decades ago, provide recreational bliss to all manner of Northwest Floridians.
Watch a video of a kayaker on the sound. >>
Only one of them, Spectre Island, is big enough or frequented enough to warrant a name.
Others are smaller, but accessible and covered in crystal white sand to offer secluded camping spots for outdoorsy types.
Still others are protected from human intruders by what avid kayaker Mary Beth Mayes calls “the creepies” — walls of dry, prickly sea grasses and swampy moats of mud.
The slowly sinking islands support a myriad of aquatic, animal and bird life, and are visited by redfish fishermen, paddle boarders and kayakers out to enjoy nature.
“Hard to believe you’re only spitting distance from civilization,” Jon Bush said during a recent island-hopping excursion with fellow members of a club called the Choctaw Hikers.
All of the islands are considered “spoil islands” by their owner, the state of Florida. As such, they come under the purview of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and are maintained by … no one in particular.
“In the case of spoil islands, the department doesn’t typically have a land manager for those properties,” DEP spokesman Patrick Gillespie said in an email. “But we rely on our district offices to help with any issues that should arise.”
Tom Rice, proprietor of the Magnolia Grill restaurant in Fort Walton Beach, recalls watching dredge vessels clear lanes for barge traffic in the Intracoastal Waterway when he was a kid in the 1950s.
He remembers the pirates of yesteryear celebrating the city’s annual Billy Bowlegs festival by staging at one of the islands prior to raiding the city.
“They’d put up a little fort, then they’d come in in their ship, fire the cannons a couple of times and ‘boom,’ magically the fort would blow up,” he said.
“Pretty exciting stuff when you were 9.”
Apparently, exploding tar paper and a 2-by-4 fort had some sort of adverse environmental impact. The Bowlegs group still lands its pirate ship at the spoil islands, but the annual fireworks are left to pyrotechnic experts these days.
The location of Spectre Island has attracted Drew Buchanan and his friends since they were young. It sits just south of Hurlburt Field’s runway.
“The planes take off all night,” Buchanan said.
Spectre Island is big enough to allow two or three groups of people to swim and sunbathe or camp and cook out without invading one another’s space, Buchanan said.
“It’s not very well known there is an island out there,” he said. “That’s pretty cool.”
Although the military doesn’t own the island, a sign posted there honors heroes at Hurlburt.
“Spectre Island,” the sign reads. “In honor of those who have gone before. In memory of those who did not return. In tribute to the gunship legacy and those that observed it.”
The sign bears the call signs “Spirit 03” and “Jockey 14.”
Fourteen airmen from the 16th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt died aboard Spirit 03 when the gunship was shot down over the Persian Gulf in the battle of Khafji on Jan. 31, 1991.
Jockey 14 was an AC-130H Spectre gunship that crashed off the coast of Kenya on March 14, 1994, while flying in support of Operation Continue Hope in Somalia. Eight of 14 crew members from the 16th SOS died.
Sonja Grogan has lived in or near Fort Walton Beach for 24 years, but said she only realized about four months ago how close she was to a kayaker’s paradise.
The easternmost islands south of Liza Jackson Park lie in water too shallow to reach by boat, so the risk of being plowed over is nonexistent.
Other islands mostly buffer this cluster of spoil lands from the wake and noise of passing vessels, so the only sounds a group of six kayakers heard recently were paddles hitting the water and the calls of osprey, crows and red-winged blackbirds.
“Food for the soul,” Grogan murmured.
The muddy bottoms off of the islands are littered with oyster shells. Grogan said she’s been told that at one time they were viable oyster beds.
Pushing through or around Mayes’ “creepies,” kayakers or paddle boarders can find a little bit of sand here or there to pull up to for a break, but access is fairly difficult. The islands are appreciated for their scenic value, but mostly are left to their natural residents.
“What I like about this is you can make this trip as long or as short as you want,” Grogan said as she paddled alongside Bush, Mayes and a couple others.
“If there’s any chance for me to get off at 5 p.m., I’m right there at Liza Jackson and I’m gone,” she said.