December 15, 2020 Tuesday

As rough as yesterday’s seas were, today the sea was smooth and calm. We even saw kayaks with fisherman and even scuba divers a half mile off the coast as we left the inlet. We had pulled anchor and made the nine-thirty opening at the 17th Street Bridge and hugged the channel to avoid getting in the way of a yacht carrying cargo ship that had a load of power and sailboats. We have toyed with the idea of shipping Monarch to a new destination by ship to simplify the logistics of a long ocean crossing.

I trolled a couple of fishing lines but had no takers, just a few nervous nibbles that stripped the line for a couple of seconds. The weather is warm and gorgeous with just a few rain clouds off to the south. It felt good to be hot again.

Around one we entered the inlet called Government Cut which leads into the Port of Miami as we carefully watched for ship traffic. One small container ship came by but no cruise ships due to the pandemic. We did see one cruise ship anchored off the coast and another on the docks at the terminal but nothing coming or going. There was a lot of power boat traffic but being a weekday it was not terrible.

We made our way along until we joined the ICW and turned south and made our way into a very calm looking Biscayne Bay and turned into the long channel leading into Dinner Key. We picked up mooring ball 107 and put up the sun shade tarps on the deck. The tarps keep the sun off the deck and hatches and allows us to keep the hatches and ports open with less fear of a passing rain shower coming into the boat.

We launched the dinghy that was stored on deck and went into pay for the mooring, take showers, and visit the grocery store followed by a quiet evening on the boat. Quiet except the mooring ball kept banging against the hull, I looked around the mooring field and didn’t see anyone else having this issue, just lucky I guess.