Key Biscayne
17 December 2020 | No Name Harbor, Key Biscayne Florida
Mike
December 17, 2020 Thursday
I had a row in the morning and then I put on my wetsuit and dive gear with Sharon’s help and I dove to look at the bottom of the boat and see if the zinc anodes where still good and I confirmed there was no fishing line wrapped around the running gear.
Around eleven we pulled anchor and went into the fuel dock at Crandon State Park to fill up the diesel tank and the water tank and learned they had no available moorings for us. After fueling up and Sharon buying a big sunhat at the marina we headed south on Biscayne Bay.
The island of Key Biscayne is a beautiful island about six miles long and a mile & a half wide. It was likely just brush and scrub fringed in mangroves until developers built the golf courses, lovely homes and hotels. Fortunately for us the government convinced one of the developers to give to the public the bottom third of the island for the Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park. The developer had already cleared the roads and dug a very protected harbor where we went and anchored and since the developer hadn’t named the harbor at the time he turned it over to the State of Florida it is called No Name Harbor.
We anchored near our friends on the sailboat Windweaver and soon Betsy came over and got us up to date on their adventures with Dan coming along later to join us on Monarch for a beer. Then our friends who had lost their mast on the way to the Caribbean came by unexpectedly and joined us from their dinghy. We gave the crew of the Miles back their dinghy safety bag that we had rescued from the Budget Rental car in Fort Pierce and it was great to hear of their harrowing adventure of losing their mast at sea (no one was injured) and then working their way back through the Bahamas to anchor off of No Name Harbor and happening upon us.
The harbor is deep up to the mangroves but is fairly small and we had to adjust our chain length as the wind slowly shifted from south to north over the day and boats drifted too close to each other. You don’t need much chain (scope) because the place is so protected but still some boats put out a lot of chain making things interesting as we all swung with the shifting wind. The harbor had all kinds of power boats tied up to the concrete wall on the south side and a variety of boats at anchor from large to small from power to sail.
After everyone left Monarch, Sharon and I rowed ashore and took a walk to a nearby beach bar that the State leases out, and where we could see Miles anchored with their broken mast. We had been warned the place was expensive and sure enough I saved sixteen dollars when I decided not to have a margarita there.