My son, Sam, was flying in from Tucson Saturday afternoon. We awoke Saturday morning, weighed anchor…well, we tried to. The anchor was wrapped around a braided line attached to a crab or lobster pot. After some cutter, we were finally free and proceeded to head east through buoy #3 and #4.
The sea state was quite rough, especially heading east through #3 & #4 and ultimately #1 and #2 before heading north. We took at least one wave over the starboard beam of the boat and Shawn, lying on the bench, got completely soaked.
My broker had suggested that both No Name Harbor and Marine Stadium have poor holding. Perhaps they do and the lobster pot line held us. In any case, when I was planning for this trip, I was looking for interesting places to anchor.
We head into the Port of Miami and took the Fisherman’s Channel to port when the channel split. The Port of Miami is quite busy and kept Lummus Island and Dodge Island to starboard and through #16 and #17 before we turned to port to head south. The channel heading south is quite narrow. We turned south west around #67 towards Marine Stadium.
When we arrived, it was close to 1pm in the afternoon and the anchorage was as busy as I’ve seen any anchorage….and loud, with lots of boats and yachts, high-wattage sound systems and folks dancing on the decks.
We ultimately found a place to anchor. Sam was taking an Uber from Miami International airport to Virginia Key. On the other side of Atlantica Seafood Restaurant and Market there’s a parking lot and then a small dinghy beach.
We had dinner at Atlantica and it was meh.
We were going to head out on March 6 up to Palm Beach but looking at the sea state forecasts, we decided to stay another night and head out on the 7th.
Glad we stopped by Marine Stadium but I’d be surprised if I find my way back there. It was glad to see and experience but it was far from calm, especially with all of the people on personal water craft ignoring the no wake signage. Fortunately, the Coast Guard was out patrolling. We saw many people get stopped but never did we see anybody get a ticket as they were just spoken to from a-far.
