Well known in society and an avid yachtsman, on July 11, 1906 Dodge took a party of his friends on the "Wakiva I", his large pleasure and cruising yacht, on a month-long tour to the upper waters of the Amazon River, the Orinoco in Venezuela and Colombia, the Guianas: British Guiana, Surinam, and French Guiana. They visited many locations in the Caribbean, including Cuba where they toured the battle fields of recent armed rebellion before returning to Tampa. His guests included Nicholas Crosby, international law authority John Bassett Moore, historian H. A. Cushing, Everitt Dominick, Eugene Delano Jr., cartographer and historian William Robert Shepherd, J. R. Thompson, and Dr. James R. Cannon. Photographs and some remembrances of the trip by Eugene Delano were published in the Yale Courant, Volume 43 May 1907, pages 686–693, under the title, "Les Iles du Salut".