Kayak Fort Matanzas
St. Augustine kayak tour around Fort Matanzas National Monument.
Tour details
What’s included
- Kayak
- Personal flotation device (PFD)
- Paddle
- Safety instruction
- Professional guide
What’s not included
- Snacks and water
Highlights
- Paddle the salt-marsh maze around Rattlesnake Island and Fort Matanzas
- Spot dolphins, sea turtles, jumping fish, and birds
- Launch from Helen Mellon Schmidt Park at Matanzas Inlet
- Learn inlet history and marsh ecology from a Florida Master Naturalist
High tide is the hour to kayak at Matanzas Inlet. The marsh fills. Creeks become corridors. Kayak slow and low past oyster bars, mangrove edges, and coquina walls the Spanish raised in 1742 to guard St. Augustine’s back door. Dolphins work the cuts. Sea turtles surface. Mullet shower. Herons, egrets, and ospreys work the same tide you do.
Local Favorite, locally operated, Floridian-owned.
Meet AyoLane
Matanzas Ecotour Meeting Point
Meeting point
9200 Summer Island Dr St. Augustine, FL US 32080
South of Ft. Matanzas on A1A.
Turn on to Summer Island Dr., keep left passing the neighborhood through the park gates onto a dirt road. Stay left and continue to the end of the road to Rattle Snake Island State Park.
Kayak Away from the City
Paddle comfortable touring kayaks through tidal creeks and winding salt‑marsh channels around Rattlesnake Island and Fort Matanzas. An expert Florida Master Naturalist guide provides safety instruction and shares inlet history—including the 1565 events that named Matanzas—along with marsh ecology and birdlife. Expect moving water and timed currents that create an authentic inlet experience where you may see dolphins, sea turtles and jumping fish.
Bring Your Own Kayak Discount
An eco-tour is the only way to see the fort from a kayak—unless you bring your own. Even then, Matanzas Inlet’s tides and currents are tricky. Don’t run the marsh maze without a guide who knows the water.
BYOK Allowed
Fort Matanzas Nationl Monumnet
Matanzas means “slaughters” in Spanish. In 1565, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés named this inlet after the French Huguenots we executed on its shore. The word still sounds like an ‘Age of Discovery’ romance.
Fourteen miles south of the historic district, the river opens into a salt-marsh maze around Rattlesnake Island and Fort Matanzas National Monument—the last undredged inlet on Florida’s east coast, and the richest water you can paddle here.