Sailing with Bob and Melinda on SV Counting Stars! (Day 4)

Calm seas, but head-on winds

After a very refreshing night of sleep in an actual bed (not on various spots in the cockpit and saloon), we woke up early to another beautiful day! 

We did our morning checks of the engines, cleaned the raw water strainers and had breakfast. We pulled up the anchor, secured it and the bridle and started our trip up the outside of the Keys.  Our plan was to get to No Name Harbor, located at the very bottom of Biscayne Bay, just South of Miami.

This was one of our stops during our ASA sailing school and is a great anchorage. 

This day was pretty uneventful.  Even though the trip from Boot Key to Biscayne Bay requires a gradual turn to port for the entire trip, the wind magically made the same turn and we motored the entire way.

At this point, we had sailed about 200 nautical miles and tacked once.  But, that's sailing, at least sailing on a schedule.

We all took turns at the helm again and we all got to chat and get to know each other a lot better.  (What a really cool group of people!)

Andy was even starting to feel a lot better; which was good, as the look at the mast through the binoculars on the first leg of our trip really did a number on him.

We were given a beautiful sunset over the Keys...

...but we still had a hour or two to get to No Name Harbor.

We arrived at the cut that eventually leads into the No Name Harbor area, which is right next to Stiltsville.  Stiltsville is a collection of houses built back in the 1930s that are basically just off the coast, in the Atlantic, in Hurricane central, and amazingly there are a lot of them still left.

There is a narrow channel between two rows of them with 1 or 2 lighted markers at the end of the channel with the rest just being reflective.  Here is what they looked like as we arrived.

We ended up going pretty damn close to the unlit markers, so I took the rechargeable spotlight to the Bow and alternated between port and starboard, spotting the channel markers.  This took about 10-15 minutes to get to just outside No Name Harbor.

The anchorage in the Harbor looked full and there were about 4 boats outside the Harbor in the anchorage, so we went to the end of the row and dropped the hook there.  Bob used the radar to make sure there were no smaller, unlit boats that we weren't seeing.  The beautiful 50' Xquisite Catamaran was hard to miss.  (By the way, if money were no object, that could easily be first choice.)

We dropped the anchor, but there was not great protection from the wind and currents, so after a few minutes laying in bed, Bob and I decided to let out some more scope and make sure the anchor was holding.  We also set the anchor alarm (three actually, the helm MFD, Bob's phone and my phone) so we'd know if we dragged at all and then went to bed.

There was a little wave action, but this never bothered me and we fell quickly to sleep.