Biscayne Bay is one of the most popular and beautiful sailing spots in the entire country. Protected from the ocean swells and yet open to the wind, it is a great place for novice and advanced sailors to sail hard and fast. This is a deck shot of one of our Oceanis 400's a maximum speed. The vessel has just found a lull, moments before the knot meter was registering 8.4 knots, which is about as fast as this forty footer will cut through the water before getting out of control. As a displacement sailboat reaches hull speed the bow will begin to settle, no longer rising to every wave. This is because the hull is attempting to climb its bow wave and plane, which in a displacement vessel is not going to happen (hull speed=1.3 times the square root of the water line length). As this happens the vessel's heel will increase dramatically, simply because you have drive power that can no longer be turned into forward motion. As the vessel heels and weather helm increases the rudder will eventually stall. Just like an airplane wing, once the rudder stalls it no longer can control the vessel.
The east coast of Florida is protected from the ocean by a series of barrier islands. The area between these barrier island and the main land was dredged and became the Inter Coastal Waterway. The ICW is maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers and runs from the tip of Florida north all the way to the Chesapeake Bay. It is an important protected waterway that has allowed the development of commerce up the eastern seaboard.
Starting just south of the Miami Harbor inlet, at Virginia Key the distance between this series of barrier islands and the mainland increases. These barrier islands become the Florida Keys. They form a gentle arc south then southwest and eventually west and end at historic Key West. Biscayne Bay is the first and most northern part of this separation, starting officially on the south side of Rickenbacker Causeway Bridge and ending at Card Sound. The bridge is named for "Eddie" Rickenbacker who was America's most famous World War One Ace and president of Eastern Airlines. Flying boats use to land in Biscayne Bay and there is still a ramp to the south of Dinner Key Marina that used to be the flying boat terminal. We still have seaplanes, Chalks Airline, the oldest continuously operating airlines in the world, lands at the western end of Government Cut. Chalks has recently been purchased by Pan Am.
Biscayne Bay is approximately fifteen miles north and south and eight miles at its widest, or about 75 square miles of clear aquamarine tropical water with an average depth of ten feet. Protected from the east by Key Biscayne and the the Biscayne Flats the Bay offers the very best to the novice and advance sailor. The southern limit of the Bay is Cutter bank, once through the cut you are in Card Sound. The next delineation is Little Card Sound and then Barnes Sound and then Blackwater Sound, while we like delineations this is still the area between the mainland of Florida and the protective barrier islands. A vessel with moderate draft can cruise this backwater from Miami all the way to Key West. The Everglades National Park covers a lot of this area and there are miles of unspoiled, undeveloped mangroves and wetlands that are home to hundreds of species of migratory birds and other wild life.
Beginning at Fowey Rocks Light, the Florida Keys gets its own protective barrier reef. This marks the edge of the continental shelf and the Straights of Florida. The outer reefs are a favorite diving destination and while the reef has taken quite a beating from diver activity, boat anchors, development, run off, pollution and hurricanes in the past thirty years the fish life and water clarity is as good as ever. There is a navigable channel that runs on the outside of the Keys and inside of the barrier reef; this is called Hawk Channel. Hawk Channel has good depth all the way to Key West.
The east - west area between the reefs of the Florida Keys and the Bahama Banks is know as the Florida Straits or the Straits of Florida. This is the narrowest part of path of the Gulf Stream, which is made up of all the water of the North Equatorial Current. The Gulf Stream is the largest river on the planet and marvel of nature. It is 45 miles wide, more than six hundred feet deep and in the Florida Straits it flow north at a rate of three to five knots. The water of the Gulf Stream does not easily mix with surrounding waters and maintains its eighty degree temperature. The color is the deepest blue that you have ever seen and while the coastal water in this region will vary from the sixties in the winter to almost ninety in the summer the Gulf Stream varies little. The personality of the Straits of Florida is extreme. It can be as smooth as a Wisconsin lake on a still summer day and with a North wind bucking the current it can he as horrible as God's giant washing machine with confused seas cresting at twenty plus feet. Getting across the Stream is a good exercise in Dead Reckoning, set and drift with a four knot current has to be considered otherwise the vessel may end up miles from its intended destination.