Miami Megapolis

The weather has been totally cooperative for both cruising and taking pictures since we left Key Largo. In our quest to make it to Titusville for the shuttle launch, we've covered over half the distance in three days, cruising 50 miles a day. We came north over Biscayne Bay, the beautiful body of water that leads to Miami. Here's the city in the distance as we first sighted it.

We grabbed a mooring ball for the night at Dinner Key Marina at Coconut Grove, still south of Miami, but with the city well within view.

The next day, we passed under this bridge and entered upper Biscayne Bay.

Rivers run right through downtown and the building are right on the edge of the water.

There are dozens of bridges along this section of the ICW. With our 15' height, we can pass under the majority of them, but have encountered a few each day that we need to have opened. Most of the bridges open twice an hour. This is the first low bridge we came across, still in downtown Miami.

After Miami proper, the ICW passes through so many suburbs and towns and I was taking so many picture that it was hard to keep track of what I was photographing. I began to jot notes to help me label the pictures when I put them into the computer. Biscayne Bay ends and the ICW narrows at North Miami where we entered the first of many "idle speed" zones.

At the port of Everglades City, this container ship was being unloaded. Note the yellow arm hanging from the crane and coming down to grab a container.

Next came Fort Lauderdale, billed as the boating capital of the world, and the megayachts were plentiful.

The homes were all mansions, and were the most ostentatious and over the top we've ever seen ... and they go on and on ... we're still seeing them 70 miles later.

The boats are equally mega, mega, mega......

Many of the mansions have their megayachts right outside.

Homes like this are all over the place along this part of the ICW.

We like a more traditional/classical style of boat, so if we had to pick, ours favorite would look like this one.

Between the no wake zones and the bridges, it was a long day of cruising. Our anchorage for the night was in a small man made harbor right off the ICW and surrounded by more modest homes. This is a shot of where we were anchored, taken this morning as we left.

The mansion and megayacht parade continued today.

Near Palm Beach, we passed by a couple of marinas that were exclusive to the megayacht market, they don't even let you in if your boat is less than 80'.

There was lots of boat traffic at the Port of Palm Beach, there's an inlet to the Atlantic here, and different channels leading every which way. The captain has to pay close attention.

After a few more hours of mansions and big boats, we reached our anchorage. It's called Peck Lake and is just off the ICW. There are about a dozen other boats anchored here and the tour boat was leaving just as we landed the dinghy on this beach.

A short walk over the sand dunes...

and we were rewarded with a long walk on this beautiful beach. Now this is what we really like about southern Florida.....

We're sitting peacefully at anchor, it's cooling off, we've got about 20 TV channels on our little digital TV with the rabbit ears, and we can hear the Atlantic surf pounding across the dunes. What a great life !!!