We're in Miami, again! We sailed down from Fort Lauderdale to Black Point Marina, which is right near Scott and Jenette's house, and they kindly picked us up so we could take a night off, so to speak. We showered, and went to dinner, and even got to sleep in a real bed!
Unfortunately, we didn't bring the proper cord for the camera, so we can't put up pictures right now. But, a quick summary of what happened: We spent two days motoring down the ICW, mostly going under drawbridges (one of the bridgetenders called Erica "captain" on the radio, and she still hasn't gotten over it). We anchored on Sunday in Virginia Key, which is directly across from downtown Miami- the skyline at night was incredible, even more so than usual since the sky was a crazy purple color, indicating that it was about to storm all night - which it did. It was a rather damp and sleepless night of frequent anchor checks and waking up to loud bursts of rain, but all in all we weathered it just fine and were able to set off again Monday morning. We actually got both sails up, and managed to do a little bit of sailing before the wind totally died on us, and we motored in to an anchorage in Key Biscayne. It was a bit disconcerting when our cruising guide told us that the entrance to "Hurricane Harbor" was extremely shoaly, but we picked our way in slowly, encouraged by the large sailboats we could see inside. The next day as we were leaving, we found out from some locals that after the cruising guide was published, the entrance had been dredged to12 feet deep the whole way across.
Tuesday was extremely windy, blowing out of the south, which unfortunately is right where we were trying to go. We beat into it for a while before getting tired and frustrated, so we headed in to No Name Harbor, which is a part of Bill Bagg State Park at the very tip of Key Biscayne. The day rate for tying up there is only $2, so we tied up to the seawall, walked around the beach, showered, and then sailed downwind to spend the night back in Hurricane Harbor, where the anchoring is free (hooray for sailing on a budget! - Treasurer Erica). My favorite part of this second night was hearing the music coming from one of the megayachts docked on shore. First of all, this guy was hanging out on his yacht, instead of in his giant mansion, and second, he listened to all of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack before moving on to Frankie Valli's greatest hits. Must be nice- I like to think that if I had a mansion and an 80 foot long motorboat, I would keep the boat on the dock and listen to Frankie Valli all night long.
Wednesday, the wind was again out of the south, but we were determined to get to Black Point. It was a long day of tacking and motoring, but we finally got to where we could see the markers for their entrance channel, so we called the marina and they told us that they did indeed have room for us. Much relieved by the knowledge that we were in fact going to make it somewhere that night, as we got closer to the channel I started making jokes about how well we had navigated the shallow water. Famous last words. As you can imagine, we immediately ran aground - agonizingly close, maybe 30 feet from the channel. Luckily, it was a pretty soft grounding- we could still turn the boat, we just couldn't go forward or back. Erica and I fought against the wind to pull the mainsail up about halfway, and with the sail full of wind the boat tilted over enough to lift the bottom out of the mud, and we cruised on in to the marina (much chastened).
After we tied up, Erica's wonderful aunt Jenette picked us up, took us to West Marine and the grocery store, and fed us a delicious dinner. Erica was asleep by 8:30, and I followed not long after. We finally have winds from a direction other than the south, so I think we're headed out to Elliot Key tonight, which is directly across the Bay from where the boat is, and Key Largo after that. I would say that our shakedown cruise was a great success. We got to do some sailing- Erica is picking it up remarkably quickly; we broke a few things; we saw some beautiful anchorages, some dolphins, a turtle, and what I could only describe as a giant sea serpent. Things are looking pretty good.
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