Barnes Sound to Miami Dinner Key Marina

Day 30: March 29, 2013

Our goal for the day was to make it to Miami.  We arose early and made our last chipped beef  gravy on toast and got the boat ready for the trip.  We were able to raise the anchor at about 7:45.  The water was relatively calm in our anchorage so the departure was easy.  It had been a quiet night so we both were well rested for the trip.

I had spent a significant amount of time preplanning a route to the Dinner Key Marina and putting it into the GPS.  This is the process that the course in navigation suggests one uses when heading into an area in which you had not traveled.  It still requires the use of charts and a closely-monitored GPS.  Along this particular route, I had about 15 significant course changes.  The GPS tells you the direction to sail and the distance to the next turn.  It also calculates the estimated time of arrival.  It really worked well except when I was setting up the pathway that I would follow, I missed a spot in the middle of about an 8 mile passage that had a very shallow area and narrow channel that needed to be navigated through.  Sometime after noon, I was motoring along, following the course and periodically checking the chart, when I noticed a set of markers about 100 yards off to the port side of the boat.  Not understanding why they were there, I jumped up, checked the chart and GPS and realized I was heading for a sand bank that was about 2 feet deep.  I immediately made a 90 degree turn toward the markers, entered the channel and continued on our way.  A couple of lessons learned.  One must be ever vigilant and double check a route before navigating it.

The wind was out of the east northeast, the direction that we were traveling so we had wind and waves on the nose virtually all day.  The wave heights were between 2 and 3 feet, making it a bumpy ride.  The last 20 miles or so were in the open waters of Biscayne Bay so the fetch allowed for the waves to build.  

We made the turn into the long channel that leads back to Dinner Key Marina at around 3:00, called the dockmaster for a mooring ball assignment, and found our spot.  It was out in a mooring field that was completely exposed to northeasterly winds so the night promised to be a rocking one.  The actual snaring of the mooring line on the ball is a tricky maneuver.  The ball needs to be approached from directly downwind, captured with a long boat hook and then secured to the boat with two bow lines.  As you approach if you are going too fast, you have a hard time both catching the line and also stopping the boat after you do catch it.  If you approach too slowly, the wind will blow the bow off course and you miss the ring.  Janine masterfully picked the exact speed and maneuvered the boat exactly to the right place to make the capture. 

We were planning on spending the night on the boat, but we had a gracious invitation from our daughter-in-law, Claire, to come to their condo and spend the night.  We elected to take her up on the invitation and took our last steak and two pork chops as well as a blog carrot cake mix that we could prepare for supper.  We climbed into Damn Dink and motored to the Dinghy dock where Claire and her boys were waiting to whisk us away to civilization. We had a wonderful meal, a well-developed blob cake and a fun evening with the grandsons and Claire and Scott.  We watched our first television in a month and it seemed that the news was just the same as the day we left. 

It was good to sleep in a nice bed.

Day 31: March 30, 2013

We slept soundly and got up a late, for us, 7:15.  Claire fixed us a nice breakfast and Scott and I headed off for the marina and boat.  We needed to do a formal registration for our mooring and I needed to check on the boat.  After a slow bumpy dinghy ride, we arrived at Panache that had survived a somewhat bumpy ride in fine shape.  The wind was blowing from the northeast and there are absolutely no land masses to break up the waves for as far as Africa.  Scott suggested that we take the boat out for a brief sail so we cast off our lines and motored back out to the Intracoastal Waterway heading for the Rickenbacker Bridge and the Port of Miami.

The wind was brisk and we raised our sail and began beating toward our goal.  The winds were stiff enough that we buried the port rail in the water so I reduced the jib so as to soften up the ride.  We sailed the old fashioned way, tacking to move up on the wind so that we could make the cut in the bridge.  The passage under the bridge was a tremendously busy as we sailed through.  We were passed by boats of all shapes and sizes.  Supposedly, we had the right of way; however, some of the pilots caused us to wonder.

Looking down from 34 floors up

From  the Rickenbacker bridge, we traveled down past Brickle Island and turned into the Miami River.  Several hundred yards up the river we were greeted by Janine, Wyatt and Claire who were waving from the 34^th floor of their condo.  We dropped our sails, motored past the huge yachts parked next to their apartment and then turned about heading back toward the harbor.  We were again able to sail back to the bridge and back to the marina.  It was a great sail.

Wyatt watching dad and grandpap down in the boat

After catching the mooring ball, we battened down Panache and headed back to the dinghy dock in Dink.  When Scott and I returned to their condo, we all piled in the car for a leisurely drive trough Miami Beach and the various villages to the north.  We were amazed by the number of huge hotels and condominium buildings that line the coast.  Donald Trump has at least 4 of the most luxurious structures that we saw. 

Spray Can Mural - one of many

We then traveled to the Hialeah area of North Miami.  There we passed through an old run down district which was covered with graffiti. As we looked at the street art, we realized that this area had been decorated by a group of extremely talented artists.  It seems that a gentleman bought a number of the old rundown buildings and commissioned street artists from around the world to paint the walls.  All of the walls were painted for blocks on end.  We stopped at a restaurant called Wynwood Kitchen which was one of these old buildings that was beautifully painted with this contemporary street art, floor to ceiling.  The food was presented in the “tapas” tradition in which a number of different dishes were ordered by the 4 of us and then shared.  The dishes were contemporary foods prepared in a way that we were unaccustomed but really good.  The picture I have included happens to be the artist Fairey from NYC.  Our table was backed up against the wall in its finished form

Next to the kitchen, was the “Wynwood Walls” which is a gated area with numerous paintings by a diverse group of artists.  The facial painting that I have added is framed by a roll up door and painted with spray cans of paint.  I highly recommend a visit to this unique area.  There are reported to be 70 different art galleries in the metropolis of art.

After dinner, Scott and Claire took us back to the dock where we crawled into Damn Dink and headed out to the boat.  We were pushing it close on darkness so we cranked up the trolling motor and got to the boat as fast as we could.  We were both tired so bed came early as usual.