Distance: 43 nm/Time: 7 + 15
Since I only had about a 7-hour day ahead of me, I slept in, had a nice breakfast, and weighed anchor at 10 am on the dot.
The winds were out of the NE which meant motoring until I turned north enough to be able to sail close-hauled. Alas, the forecast was wrong and the winds never did veer enough to allow me to sail, although the conditions would have been perfect for it.
I passed a lot of yachts that were west bound. I found it strange that boats were traveling south this time of year until I realized that these boats were doing like 20 knots and were probably just rich folk heading to the Keys from Miami for a few days. As I would experience in Miami and Fort Lauderdale over the next few days, the bigger the boats, the less likely they were to return my waving at them. It was a hot, pretty, uneventful cruise around the Keys. There were some thunderstorms moving around the area, but none of them got close enough to be a concern.
As I was approaching the southern entrance channel to Biscayne Bay, south of Miami, I could see a cruising-type sailboat lallygagging around just off the channel. I watched them for about 30 minutes, then of course, as soon as I approached, they pulled right in front of me doing about three knots. Really!?
This channel was a bit tricky, though, so I thought in a way it was fortuitous that a local boat that probably also had a deed draft had pulled in front of me because now I could follow them down the little waterway to the anchorage a couple miles away. But as I pulled in behind them, they slowed down, more and more, until I had to come to idle. WTF? I wanted to pass them, but the waterway was pretty narrow here and very shallow all around, and I didn’t know why they had stopped. Perhaps they were seeing something that I wasn’t.
So, I hailed them on the radio, told them I was unfamiliar and so wanted to follow them. They replied that they were unfamiliar, too. (Their boat was “Excalibur” out of Texas, so that made sense.) They had been hoping that I would pass them so they could follow me! Lol Well, I did have the Bob423 track1 called up on my GPS and was following it, so told them I was heading to an anchorage a couple of miles away and would go ahead of them. They followed a couple hundred yards behind me. But, only about 1/2 mile further along, there was a beautiful park with trees on the east (windward) side of the channel. This was another anchorage, and there was plenty of room. I decided that I would stop right there for the night. After all, a bird in the hand… It was also closer to turn around and go back outside in the morning should the weather permit.
I grabbed the radio to tell the Excalibur what I had decided and then noticed that they had already pulled over with the same thought. So, we anchored next to each other that night. Beautiful spot.
There was also a gorgeous sunset over downtown Miami, visible in the distance, and my likely destination in the morning when I would be northbound at last!
- Bob423 is a boat owner who travels the length of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) every year, from Norfolk, VA to a bit down into the Keys. He has access to U.S. Army Corps of Engineer sonar data and so uses it to plot and drive a safe course twice a season. (Down and back.) He records these tracks and makes them available for free download. They can be downloaded into a GPS and followed to “ensure” that one will not run aground. Of course, there are no guarantees, but I decided to go to the trouble to download them and load them into two apps on my iPad and my chartplotter. This was one of the smarter things I’ve done as his track saved my butt from going aground at least a half dozen times while heading north in the ICW. ↩︎