3/16/16       Wednesday          Key Biscayne Bight, FL


What a loooonnng day!  All three buddy-boats left around 0800 in beautiful weather, mostly clear and blue, mostly light winds which did NOT die to zero as had been predicted but only in the low double digits. Evening Light and Grace outpaced Sea Lark since our best speed is about 2 knots faster. When seas got a little rough Grace tucked in behind Evening Light and rode her wake, a smoother ride for us. Easy but long boating/motoring day. Wind on our nose most of the time and not enough wind to warrant putting the sails up when it wasn't.

We spotted Miami in the haze around 1400

Miami in the haze

and turned into the channel around 1500 and were on anchor before 1600.

turning into Biscayne Bay channel

I asked David if he was nostalgic for his "good ol' days" working and living in Coconut Grove. He declared not but it is fun to have him tell some of the stories from those days of his mid-twenties. He lived on a little cabin cruiser of 25' and rowed in to work in the boat building/fiberglass business there. Hard work and he talks about the pirates and wharf rats and odd and fascinating characters he was acquainted with, and generous people in that community.

We almost anchored at No Name Harbor (a park) but too crowded

Dan, Wendy and I dinghy-ed ashore, to a concrete wall outside the Presbyterian church and were greeted by a dozen young black children who were, maybe, part of a daycare/adventure program. Sweet helpers to get us out of the dinghy. The young man with them said he and his colleagues were on a mission trip, working w/inner city children. I'm here to say, these were the spiffiest inner city children I'd ever seen. Key Biscayne's inner city children look MUCH different than New York City or Winston-Salem inner city children. It would have been interesting to have a longer conversation to discover more about everybody involved. But, on to the food store.

Winn Dixie was much like the grocery stores w/encountered in Spain - a level of parking at street level, grocery store on second floor. Expensive! But we bought groceries, got our full carts down the gangway (a contraption latches onto the cart, keeping it level as it descends down a track, something like a railroad track). We took the escalator and met our cart at the bottom. A sign at the top says, "Please remove children". It would be fun to ride the cart down.

Then, call a taxi. Wait. Call a taxi. Wait. Call the taxi again. Wait. Finally, we begged the driver of a taxi that had been parked in the lot to take us the mile back to the bulkhead wall. Okay. Then the church was closed so we couldn't get to the bulkhead. What to do?

Accost a man in the town house parking lot. "We need to get to that bulkhead on church property but the church is locked. Can we walk through the townhouse yard to get to the water?", said I. After some explaining he took us through the gate to the waterfront yard of the townhouse, and waved David into the dock and helped us in. Sweet. His 50' Hunter (sailing vessel) was docked there. Told us it had an 8' draft and was useless in FL where the water is shallow. We waved goodbye amid lots of thank you's.

Then potluck on Evening Light with all 6 of us and a movie on their flat screen t.v. A really run evening and now we'll all be dragging our butts tomorrow morning. Hoping to leave by 0830 and make Ft Lauderdale, at least, maybe Hillsboro Inlet. We're all pushing to use this pretty weather knowing that at some point it will turn less beautiful.

Miami skyline at night

And a funny photo of me as a mosquito-head with a mystery boat behind me. That boat had bodyguards on it. We just don't know whose body was being guarded.