Still in No Name Harbor

Day 15: April 9, 2014

We had a rough night.  The wind blew hard from the west and the waters in the harbor were rough.  Having watched two boats drag anchor, I spent a good part of the night looking out the windows, checking to see that the world was staying in the same position as when we went to bed.  When in bed, I spent the time listening for sounds that indicated that things weren’t going amuck.

I finally got up for good around 4:00 and began working on the blog.  We did  bacon and eggs and spent the morning messing around in the boat.  Reading is always a backup.

Lunch was my last taco (which means I am going to have to break into my clandestine stash of Spam.  The response of my first mate remains to be seen.), We decided to go for a walk.  We took the dink to the harbor wall where we ran into several of the sailors who were discussing various topics, the most common of which was the dragging anchor incidents.  One of the boats had made an ugly approach and landing on the wall in the height of the wind.  As the wind was roaring, he pulled his anchor and headed downwind parallel to the wall; he had quite a bit of headway on when he got to the wall and it appeared that the outcome would be disastrous.  One of his crew jumped onto the wall and threw a line around a cleat.  The boat, a 40 footer mind you, jerked to a halt and smacked the wall.  I was concerned that someone would be seriously injured in the maneuver but that part turned out well.  Upon discussing the incident with the skipper, it turns out that he had roached his transmission and had no reverse to slow the boat and his forward progress was so shaky that he was afraid to try to turn the boat into the wind for the landing.  So he took his chances at a wild downwind landing.  All’s well that ends well.

We also spent some more time talking with Wally Moran.  An interesting chap

Wally Moran and companion

who has obviously been around the horn for years.  He said that he was planning on writing another article for Sail Magazine, the topic of which would be anchoring in windy situations.

We took our camera and headed south along the beautiful paved bike path toward end of the island.  I had noticed some stilted structures off shore probably a mile or so and tried to figure out what they were.  It turns out that they are stilt houses that were first established sometime back in early part of the 20^th century with resurgence after WWII.  They are still active today and I offer an interesting web

site to check it out.  (http://key-biscayne.com/kb/stiltsville/index.shtml)

Wally's boat

At the end of Key Biscayne, still in the Bill Baggs State Park, is a famous light house that was originally built in 1825.  This beautiful 95 foot structure was restored by the local folks a number of years along with a really neat light keepers cottage.  We spent quite a bit of time taking pictures and reading the interesting plaques that tell the history of the structure.

From there we walked down to the

Cape Florida Lighthouse

beautiful beach that surrounds the tip of the Key specifically named Cape Florida. Located near the beach is the “Lighthouse Café” where Janine and I stopped in for a cold beverage and ended up eating an early dinner of Cuban sandwiches and red beans and rice.    

We took a nature trail back to No Name Harbor, climbed in Dink and motored back to the boat. We now have a 2 hp Honda outboard motor for Dink.  For the last few years, we used an electric trolling motor but it was frequently leaving us with a dead battery and rowing as our only option to return back to the boat so we now zip about in true style.  The motor, although about as small as you can buy, is still a lot of power for the little 8 foot pram and I only feel comfortable motoring along at an idle.

Sunset from the mouth of No  Name Harbor

As the evening approached, we put on our bathing suits and headed back to the shower pipe and did a more thorough job of removing the grime form our bodies.  Although the water was fairly cold, we both agreed that once you got used to it, it felt great to be washing and be clean.

Meanwhile, the wind had completely

Nice swimming trunks, Huh?

died down and the harbor was glassy so we fired up the Dink and headed out to the mouth of the harbor to watch and photograph the beautiful sunset. 

It was a good day!