Miami at Marine Stadium – the shells are out

Miami skyline from Marine Stadium

In attempt to regain some boat speed (we’re down to 6.8 kts compared to our usual 7.3) I took the dinghy over to the beach, upended it and scrubbed the bottom, It was covered with grass from the month long stay in Key West. If that doesn’t improve the boat speed (we tow it behind Fleetwing), then it must all be due to a similar situation on the bottom of Fleetwing.


Meanwhile, we’re looking into dinghy davits for our boat. That would eliminate any drag from a dinghy and ought to improve boat speed too. Plus, it gets the dinghy out of the water so the bottom doesn’t get fouled in the first place.





Training in a war conoe, I guess, note the outrigger in the middle of the boat



Marine Stadium, as we found out in our first visit, is home to Olympic and college training for water sports. Tonight there was a crew in what looked like a war canoe which had an outrigger  to stabilize it and the team had paddles instead of oars. They would switch from side to side on command to rest one arm or the other. There were the usual shells out too in the distance – quite an active area!

Crews were racing too

The area is an excellent place for an anchorage and it’s surprisingly uncrowded, I don’t know why. With the winds out of the north and northeast, it’s completely protected and the holding is outstanding in sandy clay. Oh well, we certainly enjoy it. On Thursday we’re off to Ft Lauderdale which is in the middle of spring break time, ought to be interesting.