Marine Stadium in Miami - at anchor

A great sandy beach for Hoolie

We looked at all the forecasts last night and again this morning and all the forecasts except one said it was going to be a calm right north the Miami. The forecasts came from four apps have installed on my iPad and the forecast from NOAA on the coastal weather. So it was four against one that we should stay outside all the way to Miami and not take the back door route through Caesar's Creek which is more protected when going north through Biscayne Bay.

You can guess the result. The one app that predicted 18 to 20 kts winds when all the others said winds of 10 kts or less was the one that got it right! As the Caesar's Creek entrance passed by on our way north, the winds were still calm and the predictions were all good, except for that one contrary app so we soldiered on. Pretty soon the winds piped up out of the north, directly on the bow (is there any other direction??) and the waves started to build. Pretty soon we were taking water over the bimini, a really fun ride...

There are trails for running or walking right by the beach landing

I took screenshots of all the predictions along the way and photos of my wind gauge on the boat. I intend to give a report on what happened: here's what each one predicted - here's what actually happened. That's easy to understand, nothing deep and technical. Just tell me the weather that's going to happen accurately, that's all.  What's so difficult about that? One app got it right, the rest went back into the "try again" bucket. I'll give a full report sometime next week in Waterway Guide and I'll post it here later.

That's the boathouse in the background

We dropped anchor in Marine Stadium and pretty soon saw a police boat come alongside (Ut ho...) but he was friendly and just wanted us to move closer to the northern shore due to shell races to be held on Friday. The anchorage is home to the Miami boat club and we've seen Olympic racers training and often using us as turning buoys. It's very interesting just sitting back and watching the boats race.

There's a fine sandy beach for Hoolie relief on the north shore and a trail good for walking or running which we'll use Friday morning. That one app is predicting strong, north winds for Friday, the rest predict winds not over 10 kts. Given my experience today, I think I'll go with the one app that proved accurate today and stay put Friday.