About five years ago two of my band mates and I decide we want to go camping. We live in south florida and its difficult to get primitive with all the lucrative springs and national parks around. Realizing that every single one of us owned a kayak, though the drummers was fiberglass (upper middle class kid), the pianist's was plastic (kicked out his house kid) and mine was inflatable (stupid kid) we decide to see if there was an island we could feasible get to and get off the grid.Straight to google maps we go and stare at the florida keys that was a four hour drive from our town. Upon zooming into countless little green "islands" with strange marine based names we found it was difficult to distinguish between an actual sandy beach walkable island and a giant path of mangroves masquerading as an island. I ended up searching google for "primitive florida keys camping" and stumbled upon a husband and wives camping blog. There were these incredible pictures of a real and proper island just six miles off the coast of one the keys. It has sandy beaches, a canopy of large trees, and best of all...totally uninhabited.The islands name is Tarpon Belly and it had a giant man made river through its center since it was once used as a shrimping location. The boys and I looked at each other and said we were willing to take the risk of driving all our supplies down there to see if this place was for real.After four hours in the car filled with cigarette smoke and beatles tunes we pull a right onto a long dirt path named "Blimp Road". We get to a boat ramp and verify with our phones the direction we were to take on the flat and crystal clear bay. After about an hour and a half a leisurely paddling, beer drinking, and me defending that the only reason the drummer is doing circles around me is because I'm using the equivalent of an inner tune to traverse the sea, we get to the island.It was honestly amazing, just jaw dropping that it wasn't a destination for Key Folk with boats. We parked our kaiaks and the rocky shore as I tried desperately not to puncture mine, marooning myself, and set up camp under a massive tree.We are drunk, playing music, and burning live branches because we idiotically didn't pack and axe. We did however have a drummer with a samurai sword, a pianist with a .22 rifle, and me my my children's bow and arrow.We hear a scream. A damn scream on a deserted random island 6 miles from the keys. All day alone with the band and now a scream. We leer towards it sound as it is joined with an increasing volume of chatter. We look at each other and the drummer says "We are going to need to find out what that is before they find out where we are". Pianist and I both agree and begin a track towards the opposite side of the narrow island.We near the sound as we follow the center river and duck behind a bush knowing we were just meters from its source. So the three of us, not be able to see who it was, slowly emerge from the bush. And what we see was the absolute worse thing...for them. It was a father and about 6 female 12-14 year olds. So what they would see is three nineteen year olds holding a bow and arrow, samurai sword, and a fucking rifle silently arise from out of nowhere.We, upon realizing we are the danger, through all our shit back behind the bush, put on our super friendly, not gonna rape ya, faces and introduced ourselves to the father. We joked, we apologized to each other for the intrusion, and went back to our camp.Onto that Thalassophobia; Never has an issue with the sea. Scared of heights but not the deep blue. That changed the next morning.I woke up earlier than the others. The sky was different this day. Something less blue and paradise like and more fire and smokey sky. Visibility was a bit hazy as well from the slight morning fog. So naturally I decide to go fishing, by myself, on my inflatable kayak. Bait in water, I lean back in my kayak and wait for a tug.Couple of mangrove snapper later and I am far as fuck from Tarpon Belly. I wasn't paying attention. I was just catching tiny fish and drifting and drifting and drifting and drifting away. Tarpon Belly looks the size of my thumb. It would be a long way back.I look over the side of my kayak and notice I am really drifting fast. The stones on the floor, which is only about 10 feet deep and clear, are just zooming by...in the direction away from the island. Im pissed because now I know I have my work cut out for me. This is going to be a fight getting back and not being completely exhausted for the entire day.I make my way back towards the island. But every time i put my oar into the water I keep hitting godamn rocks. I try to paddle shallower but these fucking rocks keep getting in the way. Im like "What the hell is going on?". After about five more minutes of paddling more rocks than water I decided I'm fed up and have to see what the hell is happening. And then. I figure it out. I wasn't drifting that fast, I was hitting rocks, they definitely weren't rocks. It was a swarm of stingrays.I panicked a bit. I got that feeling of just walking into a spiderweb. Chills everywhere. I was a stranger on a strange planet with a thousand eyes beneath me. I just stared at them holding my oar out of the water, slightly shaking. It was endless. Just thousand and thousands of grey wings and long stings gliding silently all around me. Petrifying if you never knew they swam together or for that matter ever saw a fucking stingray because you grew up in the bronx and they don't have them up there. And they just killed Steve Irwin. I had visions of sting ray barbs stabbing through my inflatable kayak, as I sink down within the swarm they just stab and stab and stab till there was nothing left of me to see. Of coarse, I understand that sting rays don't murder people like that but isn't that was phobia is all about?They pass me by. I get back to the island. The drummer is laying on a fallen concrete pillar by the shore. He got food poisoning from eating spam or some shit and we hailed a passing boat to take him back to the car. The Pianist and I grab his kayak and paddle back to the car. It wasn't food poisoning, it was a stomach ache, he's a bitch. End of fucking camping vacation.
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