My Love-Hate Relationship with Dinner Key

Coconut Grove, FL is one of my very favorite places. There are beautiful parks to walk in, shops and restaurants set in landscaped nooks and crannies, loads of free or extremely inexpensive transportation options, a fantastic dinghy dock, a brand new marina complex with very nice and also very clean bathrooms, and a skyline view that is second to none, complete with awe-inspiring sunsets.


Unfortunately for us, it means being in the Dinner Key Mooring field to access it.

Don't get me wrong. There are many things to like about Dinner Key. The marina staff is great (especially Susan on the shuttle), and it's like cruiser central for meeting people, sharing ideas, and happy get-togethers. But the mooring field is horribly exposed and every time we come here I'm queasy half the time. Unless it's one of those very rare Biscayne Bay calm days, I can't do much of anything but lay around on the settee and read or play solitaire but, if it's like today, and if I have to put a huge load of provisions away while Kintala is bouncing around in 2 foot waves and creaking and groaning on her mooring lines, I'm going to have a vicious headache in less than 10 minutes and be down for the count in half an hour. It also makes for a very wet ride into the dinghy dock in the dink. Every time we dink into the marina, I look with envy at the Coconut Grove Sailing Club moorings in their protected harbor, all sitting calmly in flat water. We're excluded from those moorings because of our length, but one can dream.

Tomorrow we meet up with a bunch of fellow cruisers for breakfast, run our propane tank to get filled, get our pumpout from the pumpout boat, and get ready to head back over to No-Name Harbor to stage for a crossing to the Bahamas. I'm torn, because I really, really love this place, but the calm, protected waters of No-Name are calling me.

A Different Perspective

If there is any one thing that I have taken away from two and a half years of cruising, it's that cruising is different for every cruiser that's out here. There is no single right way to live this life, no single thing that works for everyone attempting it, no method or means that is universal.

You might not believe the aforementioned is true if you read the glossies that tell you the list of equipment that everyone simply must have prior to pushing off. You also might not believe that's true if you even use a valuable tool like Active Captain reviews (like we avidly do) to plan your stops and stays.

I've been thinking a lot about this because we're sitting on a ball at the Dinner Key Mooring Field in Coconut Grove, FL. We've been here multiple times in the last two years and it has become a home base of sorts. Great people at the mooring office, brand new marina office with beautiful showers and laundry, free shuttle, stores close by, fantastic public transportation all abound. If you've never been here before, the mooring field is a long, thin piece of marginally deep water that snakes out from the Dinner Key Marina into Biscayne Bay. Way out into the bay. There are a little over 200 mooring balls, and the larger and deeper your boat, the farther out into the field they will place you. In the past, we've occupied balls in the 40's, 50's and 80's. This time we're on 148.

We're .7 miles from the dinghy dock, about a 20 minute ride in dead calm water, which the mooring field is exactly never. In rough water it's at least a 30 minute slog with our small motor, and a very wet one at that, rough enough and long enough that we decided not to deploy the dinghy at all this stay, but to utilize the free shuttle that operates on the hour from 8-5 each day. The moorings are very exposed to all but wind out of the west, and even that is no protection for boats on balls above 100. If you happen to be on a ball positioned right next to the channel (like we are this time), the wake from passing boats will rock and roll you mercilessly. If we had been assigned this mooring the very first time we came here, we might feel entirely different about this place. Since we know and have experienced the gem that is Coconut Grove, even these inconveniences are not enough to deter us from enjoying our stay here. But I couldn't blame someone from writing a bad review, if they chose to do so, based on their experience with the exposed moorings.

My point in telling you all of these details is that you should take reviews and opinions of fellow cruisers with a grain of salt, us included. What one cruiser finds annoying, another might find a small inconvenience to pay for great rewards. We recently ran into a gentleman at Vero Beach who was ranting about this mooring field and the people here. I was surprised and caught off guard since we've loved the place so much in previous visits. His experience clearly was different, his expectations not met, and his comfort level exceeded. Gather all the information you can, determine your comfort level and assess your desires, then make up your own mind. Be willing to stop in a place more than once to see if your experiences are consistent. Be willing to forge a new path if there are no reviews. You just might find a hidden gem like the Coconut Grove Drum Circle, one of the best experiences we've had since we left to go cruising. Oh, and even with all of it's rolly issues, the Dinner Key mooring field has some of the best sunsets anywhere in Florida. Hands down. But, really, you have to come decide for yourself.

Once a Drummer …

A long, long, long time ago I was a drummer; High School Band, Orchestra, Marching Band, a stint in a Drum and Baton parade group, and various garage bands of wanna-be rock-n-rollers. Back then the trap set of a drummer's dream was a Mother of Pearl single base Ludwig set with two mounted tom-toms, two floor toms, snare, and at least 3 Zildjian cymbals in addition to the Hi-hat. Mine was a no-name wood set that sometimes elicited rude comments from the occasional lead guitar player of other groups, at least one of which paid for his opinion with a split lip and a black eye. That particular confrontation led to a kind of free-for-all between the two groups. Not only were mine the better musicians, we were better in a brawl as well.

If I had known then what I know now, that set would have been disassembled, each drum wet sanded and refinished – inside and out - with at least 10 coats hand rubbed clear. Then each would have been fitted with the finest Aquarian head and tuned to perfection. Those natural wood shells would have thundered with a clean voice that needed no name. Alas, such insights were far beyond the teenaged me. Soon after the sky caught my attention and the world of chasing the perfect rhythm was traded for a lifetime of chasing clouds. Oh, there was always a pair of drumsticks in our home somewhere. In fact there is a pair on Kintala even now, along with a practice skin that sounds like someone is banging on a soup can. But it had been near 40 years since the last time I pounded out a riff with another person.

Until tonight.

It seems that Coconut Grove has a kind of underground drum circle that meets every full moon. (Really, full moon? Some kind of Esbat pagan rite in Coconut Grove maybe?) Such information came via Friend Katrina of s/v Happy Dance. I didn't actually know what a “drum circle” was, figuring that it was simply a group of people playing together. Ex-drummer that I am, I like listening to others play. It turns out that isn't what is meant by “drum circle”. There is a core group that does play together, but anyone wandering by can pick up one of the spare drums the group provides and join in. So what the hell? I picked up a spare drum and joined in.

It was as disorganized and seemingly hopeless an attempt at a group effort as it sounds … at first. I sat and tried to pick out a workable riff from the clash of noise, not sure how this was going to work out. Slowly, out of the din, floated the low rumble of a base line. The better players picked up on it and started fitting their own beats to match. Soon the novices got drawn in as well, following along and supporting the base notes of the self-assembling riff. Some of the better players started improvising, adding bits of breaking curls to the underlying waves of sound. It was basic, a bit crude, and magic, all at the same time. There was something primordial in it, a human rhythm as old as the first heartbeat. A flute joined in, adding a streak of high pitched light to the thunder. A dancer (clearly a regular with the group and certainly looking the part of a Pagan celebration) took to the center of the circle. The riffs would build, morph, then fall away with some kind of natural timing. A few minutes later a new one would start to grow, and the magic would work its way among us once again. This went on for nearly two hours. Never before have I experienced anything quite like it.

I don't know these people at all, will probably never see them again. There were a few middle aged white guys, women, minorities, a few dreadlocks, and a couple of kids. Yet, without practice or any kind of overt guidance, we found some common ground, some shared knowledge. Our efforts blended together and we filled the night with the sound of human joy. If one sent the music back 100,000 years in time, our ancestors would have known exactly what was going on and could have easily joined in the celebration.

We are all civilized now of course. Refined. As well as divided and angry and violent. It seems like we have lost the ability to find any common ground. Everyone is an enemy. Everyone is a threat. But it doesn't always have to be that way. A group of strangers, making music that was as basic and ancient as the full moon itself, defied that current state of affairs.

It is why we came this way, living lighter, simpler, closer to the natural rhythms of the world. The weather rules our life out here. Tides, waves and wind dictate what we do and how we do it. It is, in its own way, an ancient kind of living reflected in an equally ancient ritual. Deep inside we are all children of distant drummers offering human made thunder to dance with the full moon. It wouldn't hurt us to remember that more often.

A different kind of sound

For the last 7 days the wind here has been howling 15-25 day and night, enough to keep you from taking the dink anywhere, enough to keep the pumpout boat firmly tied to the dock, enough to wake you up at night with the wave and rigging noise. Enough already!! So it was with great pleasure that I accepted an invitation to go to dinner and an orchestra presentation with our friends Katrina and Keith Greenwood of Happy Dance for an evening of beautiful, not grating or annoying sound.

The free concert was put on by the Alhambra Orchestra, a community orchestra located in the Miami area that is committed to encouraging the love of music. Their mission statement from their website reads:

To present live classical music in Miami-Dade County at little or no cost to our patrons, to promote music education, and to provide the opportunity for amateur and professional musicians to continue a lifelong study and performance of classical music.

The conductor, Zoe Zeniodi was one of the most engaged conductors I've had the pleasure of watching in a long time. The evening was one of obscure composers with a strong German theme, along with a few numbers accompanying a soloist, Hubert Wild, a baritone who flew in from Germany specifically for this concert. 

It was a wonderful evening, a respite from the boat sounds which I usually love but not quite in the concentration I've been receiving lately.

Here is one of the more unusual numbers for your listening pleasure. Keep in mind that this was taken with a Droil Razr Maxx HD so even though it's better than most phone videos, it's still not a good quality video.

Loving Coconut Grove

I haven't quite decided if I like this place so much because it reminds me of the Central West End where we lived in St. Louis, or if I just like this place on its own merit. Either way, the result is the same. I really like this place more each day I'm here. 

This morning on the cruiser's net they announced the Farmers Market which happens to be just 4 blocks from the dinghy dock. Since it was still howling outside and it was way too windy to risk hauling the generator over to our kids' boat to work on it, I decided to take the shuttle in to town and go to the farmers market and do laundry. I expected the type of market that we had in St. Louis, a bunch of different vendor stalls that you perused, choosing the best from each as you went along, but this farmers market is just a bit different. The entire market is set up in a parking lot under a tent and is run by Glaser Organic Farms, which is a certified organic farm located in Miami. There are tables of vegetables, fruit and herbs, and there are tables of boxed and bagged vegan raw nuts, seeds, various mixes, spices, sprouting seeds and grains. On the other end they have prepared food and some amazing milk-free ice cream based on cashew milk and coconut milk and almond milk as well as some fruit-based sorbets like berries and mangoes. The prices were a little higher than non-organic food at a grocery store, but way lower than prices at the nearby Fresh Market and substantially lower than places like Whole Foods. Everything was wonderfully fresh, colorful, and plentiful. It was sensory overload for me after just returning from the produce-starved Bahamas.

All along the outside of the farmers market there was also individual vendor booths with various health food and sustainable living products. There was a booth for organic cotton clothing, one for fermented fizzy drinks for good digestion, one for organic coffee, and many many more. The market is open 10-7 each Saturday all year round and I'm so looking forward to making it a regular part of my week.

Single Handing

Our friend Ann saved us a rental car bill and hauled Kacey and Tim to the airport this morning., Kacey was flying back to St. Louis to return to work, and Tim to Pittsburgh, PA where he will spend six weeks tending to his parents, specifically his mom who just had some surgery and is requiring full-time care. This means six weeks of single-handing for me on Kintala on the mooring field at Dinner Key in Miami. While I will desperately miss The Captain, I suspect that the six weeks will pass very quickly. I have a to-do list a mile long and it began this afternoon with some sail repair for Ann and Bill's sails that got damaged on Bill's recent trip to Bimini.

Doing sail work in Kintala is a challenge due to the limited space in the salon. The gymnastics involve flaking the damaged sail so the work is accessible on the machine without opening the sail completely and ending up with a sail cloud filling the whole salon. In this particular case, there was multiple bits of damage so the sail had to be transported multiple times back to the grass off the dinghy dock for flaking to expose the next repair location. Normally this would not be an issue because I usually have a second pair of hands to help, and some extra muscle, but today I had to haul the sail up and down the 8 companionway steps and on and off the dinghy by myself, all of which took place in 20-25 kts of wind and 2 foot waves in the mooring field. Thankfully we had our daughter's dinghy which, although it's old and hideously ugly, turns out to be a much more stable and pleasant ride and I simply couldn't have done the sails today in our dinghy and in this wind. I'm pretty tired this evening and my muscles are protesting the abuse, so I'll be off to bed soon to be sung to sleep by the howling of the wind in the rigging.

Our daughter's boat. Photo courtesy of Kacey Cramer

The to-do list picks up tomorrow morning with starting work on our daughter's boat, getting it ready for their arrival here in the mooring field Sunday after next. The boat is situated on the next mooring ball from us, and I will be burning a path between the two for the next 10 days with cleaning supplies, tools, and miscellaneous parts, doing what I can to get it liveable before they arrive. It will be good to have the grand kids close by, but it's going to be a very busy time so be patient with the odd and/or lack of posts. By mid-June we hope to be on the move North again where we will be spending the summer in Ladies Island outside of Beaufort, SC, and posts should once again become a bit more interesting. Let's face it, though, pictures without turquoise water are just not the same as pictures with turquoise water...