Day 38: Heading South

New River Downtown Docks to No Name Harbor, Key Biscayne (anchored)

February 21, 2022

We left the docks before sunrise this morning and we’re out on the ICW early enough to avoid a lot of boat traffic.

From the hatch in our salon – that’s the moon

We passed two major ports on our way to No Name Harbor: Port Everglades and Port of Miami. Lailia was dwarfed by the cruise ships and freighters.

Most fixed bridges (the ones that don’t open) on the ICW have at least 65 feet of clearance from the waterline. Lailia’s air draft – the height of the top of our mast and antennae – is 53ish feet. While it always seems like we’re not going to clear, we have a good 10+ feet of clearance for most fixed bridges –HOWEVER the Julia Tuttle Bridge on the ICW in Miami has a fixed height of 56 feet. A lot of boats “go outside” to avoid this bridge: they head out to the ocean at Port Everglades and come back in at Port of Miami. We decided that the ocean was a bit too rough so we went the Tuttle Bridge route. Knowing how close we were – and knowing that there were some waves that might push us up a few more feet was nerve-wracking.

Most bridges have tide boards that show how much air draft is available. They’re usually written in really large numbers that are easy to read from a good distance. For whatever reason, the Tuttle Bridge numbers were difficult to read until we were right up on them.

I am pretty sure I held my breathe until we were clear of the bridge.

The tide board showing the air clearance

And then… We called ahead to one of the next bridges, the West Venetian Bridge, who responded by saying they were non-operational. We called Boat US to see if they could help us figure out how we could reroute to EAST Venetian only to see West Venetian open. We still are unclear what happened, although we did hear multiple times on the VHF that West Venetian was non-operational. it was the 12h restricted bridge of the day of a total of 16 we crossed under today.

The anchorage at No Name Harbor is lovely, though, so all of those bridges were worth it. We saw two manatees in the water outside the entry to this very protected harbor. After we anchored we saw a pod of dolphins feed for a good 15 minutes.

This anchorage is in a state park, so it’s monitored by rangers. There’s also easy dinghy access and a place to take out trash. The water is very clear, so tomorrow we can try our water maker.