Miami…Here we come!

We left Marathon, Florida on Thanksgiving Day to head for Miami.  Unfortunately, sometimes when you are still working for a living, you have to be somewhere in a given time frame which is not ideal traveling in a sailboat.  We sailed for a short time, then had to motor the rest of the way with the wind directly on our nose.  We made it to Rodriquez Key just before sundown on Thursday.

Know your electronics intimately

We were finally feeling stress-free about our power system after installing new batteries in Marathon.  However, four hours out on Thursday and the indicator was telling us we were down to 50% charge!  More stress and no one to call on a holiday to figure it out!  I dug out the manuals and by the next morning had a tentative cause for the problem.  A quick call to the company in Marathon confirmed my suspicions.  When we installed the batteries, I had everything reset on the Xantrex inverter so we had all new data to monitor.  However, the amp hours of the batteries got reset to 200, which is less than a third of our actual capacity.  Problem fixed and life is once again good at anchor! 

We have one more issue that came along with the new batteries though.  When we run the engine and charge the batteries, it is creating a huge magnetic field around the batteries when they are charging.  The batteries are not far from our fluxgate compass, so the magnetic field is making the compass go haywire.  The autopilot decided to take us on a 90 degree turn from our heading!!  There are some products on the market that may shield the compass or the battery wires.  We are going to look into that.  Otherwise we will need to find another home for the compass, which is a real pain when it can’t be near anything metal.  I’ve already rearranged the storage twice because my soup pot was messing with the compass!

Biscayne Bay

Friday, we continued on to Biscayne Bay.  Once again, the wind was right on our nose so we motored the whole way.  It was pretty calm going along Key Largo and we finally lost the crab traps as we came through Pennenkamp Park.  When motoring through the crab trap fields, we switch off the watch about every hour because your eyeballs get tired watching for the darn things.  We didn’t encounter anymore minefields of them all the way to the bay.  We did pass a strange box in the water filled with flowers…perhaps from a funeral on the water?  Or maybe some boat lost it along the way? 

Entering Biscayne Bay, we were in 6-foot seas with 20 knot winds.  It was a bit rough but once inside the bay it calmed down considerably.  We anchored off Bill Baggs Cape Florida State park.  Across the water we could see Stiltsville, a group of buildings in the middle of the bay.  Back in the 40’s & 50’s, this was a “must-see” spot for the rich and famous.  In the past, several clubs were located there and rumor has it that it was a gambling establishment and speakeasy during the days of prohibition (although never proven.)   At one time, there were 27 buildings but now only seven remain.  Most were damaged during hurricanes.

We walked through Bill Baggs Park the next day and toured the lighthouse.  The lighthouse was built in 1825 and remained in operation until 1878.  It is now relit and marks the entrance to the bay.  You can tour the grounds and the outbuildings, as well as climb to the top.  We got our exercise doing that—110 steps to the top! —but the view was well worth it looking out over the Miami skyline.  What I hated was going in circles as you go up and down the steps.  I don’t seem to be affected by seasickness but moving in small circles gives me vertigo.  I had to stop once on the way up to make my head stop spinning.

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Picking up a mooring ball

We are now on the other side of the bay, on a mooring ball at Dinner Key.  It only took us two attempts to pick up the mooring ball…not bad since we haven’t attempted that since our sailing classes years ago!!  Nick and I have established good hand signals for anchoring, so we aren’t the couple screaming at each other when we are trying to get it up and down. He read something and decided he would point with the boat hook instead of our usual hand signals. If you are going to change your practice, you need to make sure the whole team is on board with it! I had no idea where I needed to go (you lose sight of the ball from the helm when you get close). Second approach, he went back to our usual and it worked like a charm. I got some experience managing the boat in small spaces, which scares me a lot but I’m getting better at it.  I keep telling Nick it took me a long time to figure out how to drive a car too, so he needs lots of patience with me!

We took a grand tour of Coconut Grove yesterday on the bicycles to run errands.  We picked up prescriptions, did our drug test for work and made a grocery store run.  Today we will go play and explore since the work is done!