3/10/22
From Steamboat Creek to Maule lake in North Miami was a pleasant 57 mile run through Card Sound and Biscayne Bay. We cranked up the tunes, took turns driving, went under 11 bridges and felt the pulse of the ICW quicken as we approached Miami on a Friday night. Maule Lake had been recommended by a dockmate heading north and it looked like a good anchorage until the wind started to pick up. At which time, we made a late day decision to get a slip at Williams Island Marina. Part of our choice for staying the night was a concern over edibility of the contents of the bags floating in our coldish cooler. This marina had a slip available and an onsite restaraunt and that sounded good to us.
However, tying up at this marina was the most challenging docking we have done to date. The finger piers are concrete fixed docks built for much larger boats, very high off the water( 5 feet at low tide) with pilings spaced about 30 feet apart. We radioed the marina office as we were approaching and they sent 2 dockhands to assist. This was a really good idea because we could have easily backed in under the piers and wiped out our stern rail and top deck supports. (big, high sided boats wouldn’t have this problem but our little tug could have sustained substantial damage). The dockhands took lines, pushed off, set fenders and eventually secured us in a spider web of no less than 7 dock lines (1 from the starboard bow to a distant piling, 2 crossed from the stern cleats to the pier bulkhead, 1 from the port side to an unreachable piling, (to keep us from drifting under the pier), 1 forward spring, 1 aft spring and 1 short line rigged so we could bring the boat close enough to get on and off the finger pier from the side deck adjacent to the pilot house. The dock hands were very experienced. When one of them landed a dockline, with an improvised cowboy style lasso, over the top of a piling, that was 20 feet away, we just stepped away, stopped asking questions and let them do their job.
After tying up, we walked the grounds (Kathy commented that it looked like a movie set), took a swim in their pool, ate dinner at the Onsite Island Grill and lost my cell phone somewhere along the way…bummer!
Any day that starts with a lost cell phone should only get better and this one eventually did. Kathy contacted Verizon and arranged for a replacement phone (thank you cell phone insurance) to be sent to the marina in Jupiter, where we are scheduled to be in 3 days. We then started north to DelRay to meet up with Kathy’s sister and her Husband, as we did on the way down. Another nice visit in beautiful and relaxing Delray. This time friend and neighbor, Ann Marie joined us to catch up after 2 years time we were glad to help her celebrate retirement…congratulations, Ann Marie…enjoy!
Unfortunately, we were once again transiting North Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach on a Saturday. We got a late start (due to an unsuccessful cell phone search) and our timing put us in the middle of the afternoon parade of the clueless. Between the testosterone fueled go fast boats, meandering overloaded pontoon boats, randomly careening jet skis and over bearing mega yachts, we tried to calmly and courteously pick our path through the mob. I only lost it once when a runabout with 3 people aboard, stopped short, directly in front of us (causing a gear crunching reverse for every boat in back of us), under an open bridge (which would be closing momentarily) in the middle of the channel, so the skippers girlfriend could shoot a video of him dancing on the foredeck under the open bridge. Note to the non nautical…boats do not have brakes and maneuverability in reverse is limited. I growled into the radio ”Pleasure Lady MOVE IT UP” whereupon the captain returned to the helm and casually moved his boat ahead. The radio chatter indicated that this stunt caused some of the boats in the back of line to miss the bridge opening. A short time later, we passed this boat and the captain gave us a hand gesture that could only be interpreted as ”whateva“. I refrained from returning a hand gesture, remembering that most Floridians are armed. After 5 hours of this we tied up in Delray and headed to Ruthie & Janek’s for some libation therapy and comfortable chairs.
