January 3 - 9 -- SEVEN Lay days in Miami B each -- Zero Miles

Miami, including the separately incorporated city of Miami Beach, is the largest city on our trip, by far. It is very much like New York, except for the temperature. Chock a block high rises, crowded urban density, traffic and parking problems, construction blocking streets frequently, lots of high income and low income people, lots of culture and a heavy Hispanic and Jewish component of the population. And while there are lots of old folks like us
down here, there are also a lot of young people in Miami Beach. Possibly the similarities are because so many retired New Yorkers have moved here -- also a lot of Canadians.
What made our stay so special -- and so long -- was the hospitality of our friends, Jerry and Louise. We swam in the surf and the pool of their condo. Those are kite board sails not gargantuan seagulls

We did our laundry there, took several showers and were ferried everywhere by auto. We had one dinner at their home, one with them and their friends, Harvey and Phyllis, at a new eclectic restaurant on Indian Creek Road at 27th Street.

From the left: Harvey, Phyllis, Jerry, Lene and Louise

and were invited with them to a lovely party of about forty people in another apartment in their building. We also had pizza with them one night and burgers at the highly rated B&B restaurant near us, which took two hours! So thge place is not highly rated by us.
They introduced us to stand up paddleboarding (SUP), which Lene frequently malaprops as "waterboarding;" Vive le difference! This was at Oleta State Park, several miles north of the city. Lene proved adept at this new (for us) sport. I'm a slower learner. I had no problem climbing up onto the board, raising myself to my hands and knees and then to an erect position. But each of the ten times I did this, after a few strokes with the long paddle, I tilted it and fell off. Next time, I'm told, I should keep my feet closer to the center of the board rather than toward its sides. And there will be a next time because we have rented an inflatable board (lashed to the starboard rails) and paddle until we get back here in about six weeks on the way home. Pictures of it, on board ILENE and in use, will be shown in next post. Jerry and Louise are also avid cyclists and Jerry is to lead his bike club on a 26 mile bike tour from Coconut Grove soon. One afternoon I rode shotgun with him in their car, calling out the 45 turns to be made during this bike trip.
Our anchorage was very close, walking distance, to many of the attractions of the downtown area in addition to both Publix and Fresh Market, a gas station, Chase Bank, dry cleaners and many restaurants.  The sights we visited were the dramatic Holocaust Memorial

and the Miami Beach Botanical Garden











 (very small but well done with about fifteen stops where you hear a recorded explanation about the fauna at that location on your cell phone).

Lene with giant banyon

We also saw The New World Symphony's hall, where they show movies for free on the huge white wall to people like us who sat on the lawn in front with a terrific audio system, and Lincoln Road Mall, a street closed to vehicular traffic and filled with shops and restaurants. We had lunh at Yuca, (Young Urban Cuban America). We are urban and American so meet only half the requirements, but they let us in and the food was good, including. for me, a  Media Noche sandwich which though called "midnight" they served for lunch.
The movie, shown for free en plein air on the large exterior wall, was "Hole In The Head", a Frank Sinatra comedy of the late 50's, which seemed uniquely appropriate to the setting because Frank played a down and out widowed playboy hotel owner in Miami Beach with a young son. The titles were aerial shots of the beach with banners towed by those beach banner planes spelling out such things as "Directed by FRANK CAPRA." It was not a great movie, saved by the performances of Edward G. Robinson and Thelma Ritter, but the experience was terrific.
At the near end of Lincoln Road, which is only about five blocks long, is a eighteen screen movie house in which we saw Unbroken, Top Five and Selma; a movie binge after a long drought along the way.
Boat chores accomplished during our stay here included sewing the sides of the zipper at the top of the stack pack to the sides of the bag. The stitches got torn out when I forget to fully open the zipper and raised the main with the electric winch; it is so strong that the sail's leach pulled the stitches out, which is not god for the sail either!
I also had to take out the interior panels of the big lazarete to locate and fix the fresh water plumbing which is hidden behind the largest and lowest such panel. We noticed that the fresh water pump did not shut off after the faucet was shut off (because, due to the leak, pressure never built up) and Lene heard a flow of water after we turned that pump off. Yes, one of the short pieces of hose that I had attached last winter had come off, so the pump was pumping our fresh water into the bilge. I added a second hose clamp to each end of that two inch long piece of rubber hose and put back all the wood panels with the eighteen screws.
While the title of this post says we traversed zero miles, we actually did motor about 2.5 miles, from one side of Belle Island to the other.

First we went west along the north side of the the Venetian Causeway (the road connecting the row of six man made islands across the center of the chart) to its low opening bridge, at its Miami (left side) end, and then back east along the causeway's southern side to the Miami Beach end (right side). We started a bit northeast of Belle Island, the easternmost of the string of man made islands that the causeway connects, to end up just south of Belle Island, just .4 miles away. We passed the Flagler monument, on the tiny island to the northwest of the blue (shallow spot in the middle of the right side of the chart.

Before the move we were about 100 yards west of the police dinghy dock (just below the small rectangle in the upper right) and afterwards we were almost half a mile south west. The reason for this change of venue was the weather.  The original anchorage was crowded making it difficult to put out enough chain to feel secure without bumping into nearby boats when swinging on the anchors. And with predicted winds gusting to 30 knots from the north, this problem would have gotten worse. On the south side, there is a lot more room between the boats and we were in the lee of the island which protected us from the strong winds.
Next stop: Dinner Key, known as Coconut Grove to land people, less than ten miles away.