We are STILL in Miami, but had to move to another anchorage. Tonight, a holiday boat parade is either starting in No Name Harbor, or coming through there, so all boats had to leave. There are many places to anchor, and of course many marinas and mooring fields in Miami. We went under the 78 ft. Rickenbacker Causeway Bridge (left) to Marine Stadium just on the other side of the bridge. This is the first place we came when we sailed from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami in August, 2008, for our sailing class. It’s a very protected area and the winds are over 20 kts today so we wanted protection. The bridge connects Miami with Virginia Key and Key Biscayne.
We came across Biscayne Bay which was choppy. It took about an hour to get here. The photo above is from our anchorage, looking at the downtown Miami skyline. The buildings are architecturally very interesting and up close the colors of the buildings make it even more dramatic. Tonight, we should see a beautifully lit skyline.
Mark has figured out what is wrong with the voltage to our hot water heater and it’s also affecting our watermaker, but he’ll need to do some re-wiring to fix it. In the meantime he has rigged up a different way to get power to the hot water heater.
The winds have been from the north since yesterday and will start turning to the east and south tomorrow and Monday. We are planning to make our crossing to Bimini on Tuesday. We have to consider the wind direction and also the wave height in the ocean and especially in the Gulf Stream. After several days of northerly winds, and the front that came through, the Gulf Stream waves might be higher than we like so we’re giving them a few days to calm down.
There are several places to take Daisy ashore here, but we chose a little island. Amazingly, for Florida, the only “no” on the sign was “no dumping.” It was probably too tiny to worry about dogs on that little beach so Daisy got to chase a few sticks and cool off in the water.
Tomorrow, we’ll head back to No Name Harbor to wait until Tuesday, when hopefully we’ll finally get across to the Bahamas.
At the right, Daisy relaxes on the front seat of the dinghy on our way back to the anchorage. Usually, she “watches where we are going” with her front feet on the seat, facing forward, but she was a little tired from her exercise.
