It was a long 60 mile day Monday as we made our way to Miami with weather that was cool with off and on sun. We weren't sure where we were going to stay other than anchor out somewhere but not sure where.
Sadly we passed by state parks at Boca Chita and No Name Harbor (both of which we've stayed in the past and enjoyed) but we were concerned about the weather for both Monday night and Tuesday.
So Steve checked Active Captain and found a nice "anchorage" right near downtown Miami. Used to be that anchorages were thought to be a nice, secluded, get-away-from-it-all spot. Not tonight! What he found was a nice little deep spot just off of the ICW.
It was perfect! Follow the white deep water channel in and anchor in the deeper water near shore.
By the time we were in and set it was 5 o'clock already, winds were mild, temp was nice. Sit back and enjoy the sunset.
The view at night was fun - having been at Banana Bay for 3 months, I almost forgot what it was like to be in or around a large city. The evening view was quite nice for a change :-) It ended up raining most of the night - it was a good decision to continue as far as we did.
And it's never hard to tell when we're in the Miami area - just have to check out all of the large yachts lining the shores. By the way, we were called a yacht today! There was dredging in the channel and I was going very slow as I wasn't quite sure of where to go. The dredge captain called on channel 16 to the "yacht approaching". I looked around to see who was behind me before I figured he must mean us!! I'm sure they call every boat a yacht but first time for us :-)
It's so different traveling through southern Florida (well, the whole Florida coast for that matter) than it is traveling through the Keys.Tall condo building lining the waterway (often on both sides with more being built every year), bridges every 2 miles or so and way more boaters than we've seen in 3 months - and it was a Monday! We have a rule: never, never travel through Miami on the ICW on a weekend. Guess how we figured that one out ....
It was a short 15 miles to the Hollywood City Marina on Tuesday.
We last left them in Georgian Bay last September when we were on Guppy and they were on Deja Vu (well, that's not quite true as they drove two hours to Severn Falls to bring us a part for our engine - such friends :-))
Now as soon as we get provisioned and the weather decides to cooperate, we'll head off to the Bahamas...... but it looks like it may be a while.
We'll see. Nice sunset again - taken off the back of Yesterday's Dream.
It was quite the lazy morning today. I think we're both still catching up from the travel. Not sure why, but it is tiring.So the thought was we'd ride to Publix (about 1 1/2 miles) to pick up a few things. Off comes my bike, park it on the dock, wait for Steve to bring his bike.
I turn my head and my bike has blown off of the dock and into the water!! Who knew it was so windy??
Fortunately, Steve was able to hook it with the boat hook and pull it up. Guess I learned a lesson about how to not just stand my bike on the dock on a very windy day!
What a difference between riding around here and riding around Marathon! The streets are all lined with palm trees. No bike path but the side street on which we were riding was pretty quiet.
On the way back, Steve spotted this duck? goose? that was kind of weird looking in an interesting way.Not sure what kind of bird this is -- any suggestions??
Dinner tonight? Peter and Cheryl are coming by dinghy. I think they are bringing the salad and Steve is making some kind of pasta.
Life is back to normal :-)
Looks like an adventure is started. excellent!! Might get that bike taken care of. will have saltwater in all bearings and cables.
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