When we woke up in the morning the winds had not subsided at all. We again debated whether it was worth it to leave or not, but ultimately decided to see if the weather would cooperate.
Later in the day we decided the wind wand waves would at our back so we would depart and head over to No Name Harbor. The trip wasn’t too bad, and once we got close to shore the waves were manageable. We found the entrance to the harbor, which is in Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park. Apparently “several development plans indicated the land was slated for the construction of condominiums and residential homes. The surrounding land was cleared for development in the 1950s, and charts identified the body of water as “No Name Harbor”. The plans failed, and the harbor’s name was retained.”
Upon entry into the harbor we were greeted with about fifteen or more boats all anchored in this harbor without a hint of the wind that was howling out in the bay. There was room here and there, and some helpful boaters told us we should drop anchor between them and then fall back with our scope to end up behind them. It looked good to us, so we did as they directed. There is a concrete wall running around half the harbor where people can dinghy to for shore access. There are trails, fishing piers, a small restaurant with restrooms, beaches and a lighthouse all in this park. Once our anchor was down I had the obligatory ‘anchor beer’ while sitting out back making sure our anchor was holding tight. After I was confident we were securely anchored, we took Frank ashore to explore the park. We walked the trail to the lighthouse, but it was closed for the evening. We still got some good pictures and then made our way back. The boats were all swinging in the same direction, so everything looked good. We were only about twenty feet from the concrete wall when the boat swung to the east, but there was enough room for boats to get by so I wasn’t too worried about it. Dinner was made and we hung out on the back deck enjoying ourselves and thankful we didn’t stay on the mooring ball another night- this was like a whole different world again.
Later in the night, just as I was getting ready to retire, I felt something wasn’t right. Lauren had retired already and I was trying to figure out if we were getting closer to the wall or if it was my imagination? The winds were really howling though the trees around us, but the harbor itself was flat calm. The boats were swinging a little to the wind, but nothing too rocky. I stayed up a little while longer- I felt we were closer, but were we still moving? It was now past 11pm and everyone else in the harbor seemed to be asleep. I thought about my option: start the engine and try to re-position? No- too loud and maybe we were stopped now? If I have to do it I will do it in the morning. I watched a little longer then decide to retire myself and deal with it in the morning…
“Jason- Wake up! We’re hitting the wall!” Lauren was standing at the bottom of the steps calling out to me. “Jason!” she called again. “Whhat!?- F*@k!” I groggily got up and came topside to see where we were. Our anchor had indeed drug even farther to where now our stern was really close to the wall. Inches. We well may have hit and bounced off (thank goodness for steel once again!) but we were still there, ready to possibly hit again. “This is not good” I’d like to think I calmly replied. Now I had to act and my first thought was to get a bumper between us and the wall. Lauren was doing that as I surveyed the situation. Our anchor line was still down and taught, which means the anchor was there, stretched out, but not holding very well. Hmmm… Ultimately I decided to let more anchor line out so we could maneuver the boat to the wall, then tie off to the cleats they had there. The park rules here were you could tie up boats for the day, but no overnight docking was allowed- you had to move the boat in the evening and anchor or leave. Since it was now 1am I figured no one was going to come by and give us grief over it- and if they did I would plead forgiveness. This seemed better than any alternative. We finally got the boat secure to the wall (still with the anchor down in the harbor), and after making sure we were ‘good’ with bumpers in place, we retired once again to get some rest and would deal with our issue in the morning. I was really thankful we moved toward the wall and not toward other boats.
Day 2: We debated what to do about our situation. We were now secured to the wall which is perfectly legal- for the day. We knew we were supposed to be off of it by 2am, but with the boat traffic in the harbor and our plan of leaving the next morning, we decided we would stay put for now. I tried to figure out a way to retrieve the anchor, even using the dinghy to position myself over it and trying to pull it up by hand, but that was not working. We were in a little bit of a conundrum, and after a while deciding what to do- we went to the beach!
The afternoon was quite enjoyable. We spent a bit of the afternoon wandering arounf the lighthouse ground (where we met a couple from Warren, Ohio!) and then went to the beach for a while too. We then biked into town to the grocery store and stocked up on some supplies- as much as we could carry on the bikes. Then we made it back to the harbor and back on the boat. We were still tied off to the wall, and after some more discussion we decided we would stay here for the night and leave first thing in the morning.
The next morning we went straight to work on departure. We were up early and walked Frank, then as the sun was coming up we started the engine and prepared for departure. We planned on using the self serve pump out station before we left as it was free and available, but as we were tossing our lines we saw another boat pull up to it. It didn’t matter though because our first priority was to retrieve the anchor. We pushed off from the wall, me on the bow and Lauren at the helm. I was giving directions as the anchor line was coming up. We had a somewhat tight space to do this in as another boat had pulled up and anchored where we were yesterday. Lauren was doing a great job maneuvering the boat and retrieving the line when I started to see the chain part of our line coming up. Soon the anchor was in sight and as it rose above the water line I saw there was a long broom handle caught between the prongs! I had to reach down and wrestle it free- maybe that is why the anchor didn’t set?! Once the handle was free, Lauren pulled the rest of the anchor up and we turned toward the exit. We circled around and came up on the wall right behind the sailboat that was using the pump-out station and waited. Once he left we went to work completing our pump-out and running our own hose from the water spigot so we could fill our water tanks. Now that we had topped off water and had empty toilet tanks, we were good to go for a couple of weeks at anchor if need be. Before we started to head to our next destination (an anchorage by South Beach) we took a leisurely ride through what is called ‘Stiltsville’. “Stiltsville is a group of wood stilt houses located one mile south of Cape Florida, on sand banks…on the edge of Biscayne Bay…the structures stand on wood or reinforced concrete pilings, generally ten feet above the shallow water, which varies from one to three feet deep at low tide”, but there is a deep-ish channel that runs between a row of the houses like a road. We followed that and got good views and pictures of the strange houses, then turned back north to go back across Biscayne Bay and closer to Miami Beach.
The weather was pleasant, and it was a nice day for a boat ride. We worked our way under a draw bridge then turned east to get close to South Beach…