Onward to Miami

We have been out of internet reception for a couple of days even though we thought we has every angle covered with our '5 Mile WIFI connector'! Oh, well, just a minor gremlin to sort out this time..we hope. Anyway, here I am in the Coconut Grove library which is just a short walk from our anchorage at Dinner Key in Biscayne Bay, Miami. Since I last wrote we left our comfortable dock at Las Olas Marina and travelled a whole mile south on the ICW to an anchorage at 'Lake Sylvia'. This is a favourite staging point for boats waiting for a 'weather window' before crossing the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. Tuesday was to be the day for some, like our new friends, Sue and Paul on 'Independence', to make the crossing. We hope they made it safely. Lake Sylvia is also a short dinghy ride and walk away from a whole lot of useful shops, such as 'Blue Water Books' (THE best store for boating books and charts), 'Boaters World', Winn Dixie and Publix supermarkets, and also a great restaurant called the 'Southport Raw Bar', which offers 'happy hour' beers for $1.75 and a dozen delicious oysters for $6.95.
Tuesday was the day for us to make a break from the beaches and bars of Lauderdale to more beaches and bars in Miami. It was a calm, blue day, so calm in fact that we were able to practice pulling our self-furling main out and in a few times to check it out. Last time we had done this was in May in a 30 knot wind and it wasn't easy!
It took us 6 hours to run down the Atlantic coast past forests of high-rises, only to arrive in Miami..high-rise capital of the world! We sailed into Government Cut past cruise and container ships, slipped under Rickenbacker Causeway bridge and anchored, we thought successfully, at the Dinner Key Anchorage at Coconut Grove! However, when we awoke this morning, we weren't in the same place as last night!! Luckily there hadn't been much wind and we had missed all the other boats. So we have re-anchored, with some difficulty, as the bottom here is very muddy and weedy. We needed to use our 'Bruce' anchor instead of a 'Fortress' this time...for those into the technical aspects of all this! It's 'Thanksgiving Day' tomorrow, and we have been invited to dinner at my English schoolfriend, Sue's house. Must go now, as the air-conditioning is freezing in here, it's a bright clear 80F outside....and the shops and restaurants of 'The Grove' are beckoning. Hope we can find our boat when we get back!