Depart: Pompano Beach Private Dock 10:15
Arrive: Pumpkin Key Anchorage 5:45
Distance: 63 nm
We were slow moving this morning to get going. Before we took off, we went to say farewell to our host and his wife. Of course we talked, and ultimately, we left much later than we should have for a long day's travel.
When I looked out our door this morning, I was greeted with a view of this well-balanced bird.
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| Standing still and steady on one leg! |
Because the tide was low, we had a devil of a time getting our lines off the poles. Fortunately for me, Clark was the one struggling to get them off. This too ate up a bit of precious travel time.
Finally we were underway and headed for the Hillsboro Inlet to venture out into the Atlantic Ocean. Clark checked the wind speeds and directions but not the wave heights. We hoped we would find reasonably calm seas when we got out there.
As we waited for the bridge to open, a huge sports fish boat came up to wait with us. We sat waiting for the bridge for 7 minutes before the tender opened it for us. As we passed through the bridge I noticed the warning sign posted there.
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| Sign reads ... "Hazardous Inlet Local Knowledge Required" |
As we entered the basin, we saw a smaller sports fish boat coming in from the ocean and heard him radio his big buddy behind us, "You better hug the greens! It's real shallow coming through here!"
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| Sports fish coming in as we head out at Hillsboro Inlet |
Clark decided to pull over to one side and let the sports fish boat go first. We figured that if he could make it through, we could. We figured he must be thinking the same because as we slowed, he slowed. When we came to a stop, he also stopped. It became clear that we were not going to be following him out.
Given that, Clark proceeded to make his way out of the inlet. As he moved forward, I looked back and saw that the sports fish had decided to abort. He was turned around and waiting for the bridge to open to let him back into the ICW. Uh-oh! As we approached the ocean, we could see steep waves breaking at the entrance to the basin. Clark told me to watch the depths as it was dead low tide.
Suddenly, one of the waves hit the bow of the boat hard and pushed us to the side. It felt to me like the boat was going to roll over. Clark pushed up the throttle on the starboard side to counteract the push from the wave. My heart was racing! I held onto my seat as we wildly rocked back and forth.
All the while I'm watching the depth and worried we might bottom out in the gully of one of these steep waves. As we recovered from being knocked about by the wave, Clark said, "Looks like we're still floating!" A statement that I interpreted to mean, "We're not sinking!" I asked him about it later and he said that what he meant was, "We're not aground!"
Once we got through the breakers, we had 3-foot plus seas. I turned to Clark and said, "It's too rough out here. We need to go back in." Somehow he did not appreciate my joke! Clearly I would need to be completely insane to want to go back into that inlet after the adrenaline rush we got working our way out.
Unlike most days, the ocean was rather busy today. We just got ourselves comfortable with the waves and a waypoint set for our destination when we came upon a small boat up ahead and to port. Nearby, but to starboard, I see what initially looked like a trap but then I realized it was a "diver down" flag. As we approached, a man in the boat started waving his arms and pointing to let us know there was a diver down. We rerouted to avoid that area, but to do so, we had to turn into the waves and get thrown around a bit more.
A bit further on, we came across another diver down situation.
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| Boat showing U.S. and International Diver Flags |
Continuing on, we heard a VHF announcement made by the U.S. Navy that they had operations in progress and had restricted travel areas in place. We thought we saw the related vessels up ahead and gave it a wide berth, but it turned out to be just a commercial vessel at anchor.
Several miles later on we got a call on the VHF radio from USN Mallory that we needed to move outside their operations zone - within 1 mile of shore or outside 4 miles offshore. We were 1.2 miles offshore, so we opted to head closer in as we transited the area.
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| USN "Holly" - part of the Naval operations at Miami |
Further on, we heard a helicopter overhead. Clark grabbed the camera once again and took a picture. It turned out to be boatpix.com. I wonder if we will get solicited to buy a picture of Clark taking a picture of the helicopter!
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| boatpix.com helicopter |
After all the excitement, we finally saw Miami Beach and knew we were getting closer to Government Cut where we would exit the ocean and return to the ICW. I hoped this inlet would be kind to us. Clark said that it is huge and well maintained because of large commercial vessels coming through. Phew!
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| Miami Beach from Atlantic Ocean |
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| Governor Cut - Miami Lighthouse |
Coming into the Miami area, we passed commercial vessels, i.e. huge container ships, being loaded / unloaded.
Clark thought about staying in the Marine Stadium anchorage, so he went close by there to take a look. The anchorage was very busy.
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| Busy anchorage at Marine Stadium |
After passing through the activity and high rises of Miami, it was quite a change to enter the relatively quiet waters of Biscayne Bay.
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| Bye Bye Miami |
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| Sailboat on Biscayne Bay |
We did some math concerning the distance to our target anchorage and our speed and determined that we would be racing the sunset to get there. The sun managed to set before we reached our destination.
Fortunately, we have anchored here twice before so Clark was familiar with the area.
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| Ready to drop anchor at Pumpkin Key in Biscayne Bay, Florida |
As we crossed Biscayne Bay, I cooked dinner. Almost as soon as we had the anchor down, we sat down to eat!
Sounds like a scary and busy day.
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