What Chris said.
I am a Fl Native and I have a tremendous amount of respect for large gators. If you are standing to close to the water, they do have the power to pull you in and there ain't a d**n thing that you can do about it. If you are in a kayak, canoe, Gheenoe or any of the other small craft out there, if they wanted to, they could get you out of it and there ain't a d**n thing that you could do about it.
Go ahead, sit on a boat dock with your legs dangling down. The odds are nothing will happen but there is a chance that you will lose a leg or two.
For the guy that said gators are more scared of us than we are of them, ask James Okkerse what he thinks about that. Well, you can't ask him because he is the latest person in Fl to be killed by a gator.