Boca Chita Harbor to No Name Harbor (Key Biscayne)

We dropped the dock lines at 0845 on 31 Jan headed to No Name Harbor, only about nine miles from Boca Chita. No Name Harbor is located inside the boundaries of Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, which is on the southern end of Key Biscayne, about 10 miles south of downtown Miami. We stayed here on our way to Key West and liked what we saw, so we decided to return for a night before heading to Ft. Lauderdale on Thursday.

We tied to the sea wall and then decided to walk the island this time as opposed to riding our bikes. The land and water here is beautiful. There are biking and hiking trails that are well maintained. There is a boardwalk, bicycles available for rent to tour the island, a beach area for swimming, a sea wall along the Biscayne Bay side for fishing, and the Cape Florida lighthouse that overlooks the park. There is also public transportation available just outside the park entrance that will get you to anywhere in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area. There’s also a restaurant that’s open until 8:30pm.

After walking the island, we then walked to downtown which is about 1.2 miles from where our boat is docked. We had lunch, got a few grocery items and headed back to the boat. We then moved the boat from the sea wall and found a spot in an already packed harbor to drop the anchor for the night. Getting the boat off the seawall was tricky. The wind was strong and the water was at low tide, so we stirred up the bottom as we tried to pull away from the wall. Fortunately, a fellow boater was walking by who helped push our 40,000 pound boat away from the wall; otherwise, we may have stayed against the wall until the winds calmed.

When we say this anchorage was packed, we mean there was no room for even one more boat. That is, except for the sailboat that came into the harbor about 8:30pm, and then spent the next hour and a half trying to squeeze a 50 foot sailboat into the mix of mostly sailboats and a few powerboats. Unfortunately for us, he chose to drop his anchor about 25 feet from us, which is too close. It is actually not a serious problem unless the wind shifts overnight. A brief lesson in anchoring (for those who haven’t done this), I will explain why.

Anchoring is an art that no one really masters. Ever. This art consists of dropping a huge hunk of steel, of varying shapes and sizes, into the water that varies in depth. One attaches either a line (rope) or chain to this huge hunk of steel, drops the whole mess into the water, and then does their family ritual to get the anchor to go to the bottom and bury itself in the mud, sand, grass, gravel, rocks, or whatever the bottom consists of. How much line or chain (called rode by the salty ones) goes into the water with the anchor depends on how deep the water is and how strong you expect the winds to be that night. Then the fun begins. I think every boater has their own way of burying their anchor into the bottom, from putting the boat into reverse and digging in the anchor, to crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. Some are very good at this, and some are not. Some are much more experienced than others. The problem is, you can’t tell how good, or experienced, or dumb, the boater is by looking at their boat, their ground tackle (anchor and rode), or at them. One sign though, is when someone comes into an anchorage late and drops their anchor way too close to another boat, or some other stupid anchoring technique that could result in a midnight collision if the wind shifts. The prudent captain will check the wind direction before going to bed. The reason for that is that when the wind blows, the pointy end of the boat always points into the wind, (unless one has put out more than one anchor, but that’s another lesson).

Anyway, this 50 foot sailboat that came into the anchorage late and dropped his anchor next to us was among the latter kind of boater, the dumb kind. Why you ask? Well, as predicted, the wind shifted from the NE to the South during the night, and I knew that was going to happen, so I didn’t sleep well that night because I was up every hour watching to see how close our two boats would be as the wind shifted. Needless to say, our boats were so close in the morning that we were very uncomfortable, so we pulled in our anchor earlier than intended, and got out of Dodge, heading for Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.