May 26, 2005. 2150. 25°47′23″ N., 80°9′53″ W.
We pass through the channel beneath the Rickenbacker Causeway with both engines at idle and follow the channel due north to a small, triangular, man-made island called Brickell Key (25°46′3″ N. by 80°11′6″ W.) We round the northeast point of Brickell Key and make our heading one point west of north for a hundred yards, then make a ninety-degree turn to starboard and hold that course for two hundred yards, then execute a forty-five-degree turn to starboard one more time to come parallel to the sea wall on the Port of Miami.
All this fancy helmsmanship is handled by Dave. I haven’t yet mastered the art of holding a steady course in flat seas. Instead, I’ve been assigned the job of navigator. I hold on my lap a thick book of nautical charts. The blue part, I am reasonably sure, is water. By sheer dead reckoning plus a careful sighting executed moments ago, I can say with a high degree of confidence that we’re in the Western hemisphere. Probably the top part, north of the equator. Probably.
The Port of Miami defies description. It’s easy to just state the facts: The Port sits atop a two-mile-long piece of land called Dodge Island that is almost entirely man-made, created out of sea bottom and concrete by fifty years of dredging and construction. The Port handles so-n-so many container ships and freighters per day bearing such-n-such many tons of cargo. I could look up the numbers, but there’s not much point. They’re so big that they defy conception. In the same way, container ships are so big they defy conception. I’m looking at one right now, the Safmarine Cunene, easing its way free of the dock propelled by bow thruster and tug boat. It’s seven hundred feet long, has a beam of sixty-five feet. Once it’s in the open ocean and under full power, it will steam at a speed of twenty-two knots to ports in Venezuela and Brazil, arriving at its final destination of Porto de Itajaí on Tuesday, June 5. Those are the facts. But seeing it boggles the mind. Container ships aren’t vessels. They’re architecture, enormous warehouses that float from city to city. The cliché is to say that sitting next to one, particularly one that’s actually underway rather than just tied up in port, makes one feel insignificant. I don’t get that at all. Seeing this monster of steel and steam in motion makes me feel incredibly significant. People built not only this giant ship but the very island to which it was made fast when it was loaded. Look what we can do!
Cunene is a monster, but it’s a slow-moving one. Even at our paltry eight knots, we skitter past it like a minnow zipping past a blue whale. Ahead of us lies another wonder of construction, a deep and wide channel to the sea called Government Cut. To the north is Miami Beach; to the south is Fisher Island. Fisher Island, Captain Bob tells us, used to be the private home of the Vanderbilt family. Richard Nixon used to have an estate there, he tells us.
Government Cut actually extends for nearly a quarter of a mile past the eastern edge of both islands; its edges are defined by a pair of perfectly parallel sea walls that jut out toward the horizon. We are in that ill-defined middle ground now, the transition between the brown water of Biscayne Bay and Miami Harbor and the blue water of the continental shelf. Beyond that, the Atlantic Ocean. If we push the throttles forward, sending the engines up to 2,000 RPM and cruising at a comfortable 20 knots, our next stop will be Andros Island in the Bahamas. We should be there by midnight.
Alas, mundane concerns intrude. With 1,700 gallons of diesel in our bunkers, can we make the trip to Andros and back without topping off? How much fuel do those big Detroit Diesels drink anyway? And dare we go to sea with one generator down and the other one not yet quite warmed up from its long slumber over the winter? Captain Bob weighs these considerations and others — like where did he leave his passport? — and makes his decision. He orders a reciprocal course, two points north of west and steady on. We turn our backs to the sea and return to the relative safety of Miami Harbor.
From there, it’s all just sightseeing. Captain Bob guides us through the maze of man-made islands that fills the harbor north of the Port. The geography looks pretty simple on the chart, once I decipher all the cryptic nautical symbols — or at least learn to ignore most of them. But from the helm it’s a different story. The only landmark I can identify through binoculars is a monument on a little clod of land right in the middle of the harbor, and the only two things I’m able to tell from that sighting are that we are, in fact, in Miami Harbor and that we’re circling the monument in a counter-clockwise direction. Everything else is guesswork.
Captain Bob selects our anchorage, or rather he lets Mother Nature select it for him. As the sun sinks below the jagged western horizon formed by the Miami skyline, Bob points to a spot in the water utterly undistinguished to my lubber’s eyes from every other spot in the water. Dave brings Albacore in slow and steady as Bob leaves the bridge and goes for’ard to the bow pulpit. He guides Dave with hand signals as dark clouds gather more rapidly than I would have thought possible. A little ahead, all stop, full reverse, all stop, and in that fashion we dance into position with our bow to the wind. Bob cranks the windlass and lets out the anchor, a plow-shaped contraption of steel that probably weighs as much as I do. He peers over the side as fat raindrops begin to come down on us. The wind picks up and the rain starts coming in sideways; we’re at a five on the Beaufort Scale: “fresh breeze, moderate waves, many white horses, some spray.” With engines at idle, Albacore is beginning to fall off the wind, putting tension on our anchor line. Dave holds the bow into the wind with just the rudder; this is all part of the Captain’s plan. He peers intently with that perfect concentration of his, watching the way the anchor line plays out as we get blown slowly away from our carefully selected spot. At the right moment, he does something to the windlass that I can’t see from the bridge and our aftward movement stops suddenly. We’re at anchor.
Dave and I secure the bridge as best we can — it’s an open, or flying, bridge, which means it’s only got glass in the forward half; the rear half is open to the wind with only a rail and toe-rail around the gunwale. The chart goes back in the drawer — these drawers, like all the rest, have latches to keep them closed in rough seas — and we go below to seek shelter from the coming gale.
The Captain is below toweling off; Dave is in the galley assembling our dinner. In a minute I’m going to go join them. But for just now, just for a minute, I intend to sit here on the lee afterdeck and watch the wind carry the tops of the waves off into clouds of blowing spume. Before I go below, I shall say a silent prayer for absent friends.
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