Haulover Beach and Miami Beach

The crew of the HMS Beagle recently enjoyed a lovely day in the Miami Beach area.  Captain Fitzroy   ordered the Captain’s Yacht to set sail for North Miami Beach in the morning, making landfall at a place know as Haulover Beach.  On Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sunday’s the good burghers of Miami-Dade County have decreed that there will be a leash free beach day for those of the canine persuasion.   This of course appealed to the ship’s naturalist, Mr. Darwin, and so we set off.

 

 

Arriving at Haulover and mooring at an appropriate location, the crew made its way to Life Guard Station #3 where the beach could be accessed.  To Mr. Darwin’s delight there were several canines already enjoying the high surf and indeed several people were there as well enjoying the beach and challenging the canines to plunge into the surf.  A little farther down the beach, there was obviously some kind of surfing-lesson-for-humans going on – either that or it was surfboard rush hour at Haulover.    Surfing is, of course, a sport first demonstrated to the world during the voyages of Captain Cook to the Hawaiian Islands.

 

 

After enjoying Haulover, the Captain’s Yacht set a course to South Beach and, after an interminable length of time trying to find a mooring space – scarcer than hen’s teeth in South Beach – the crew headed to Lincoln Road Mall, a pedestrian shopping and restaurant area.   We settled in for lunch at the Hofbrau, a place specializing in German Cuisine – not the contradiction in terms you might think, as a delicious lunch of worst, sauerkraut, pretzel, beer and wine was shared by the entire crew.   

 

The crew then set off for a long perambulation along the beach walk as the weather became lovelier as the day wore on.  Mr. Darwin especially enjoyed the flora along the way, making a point of regularly marking various species of plants.  He is also a keen observer of indigenous fauna, especially of the feline variety, which he takes great care to point out to the rest of the crew and anyone else in the vicinity who cares to listen.

 

 

One interesting cultural aspect of Miami Beach is the ERUV.  In its simplest sense it is just a string set up on a series of posts that encircles most of Miami Beach. One would hardly notice the string as it is very unobtrusive. Perhaps the only places that it is really observable is on the beach walk where the string can be seen running for miles along the beach.  It’s significance is related to the presence of the Jewish community in Miami Beach.  The Ship’s blog will simply quote from the summery in  Wikipedia as follows: ” An eruv ([ʔeˈʁuv]; Hebrew: עירוב‎, “mixture”, also transliterated as eiruv or erub, plural: eruvin [ʔeʁuˈvin]) is a ritual enclosure that some Jewish communities, and especially Orthodox Jewish communities, construct in their neighborhoods as a way to permit Jewish residents or visitors to carry certain objects outside their own homes on Sabbath and Yom Kippur. An eruv accomplishes this by integrating a number of private and public properties into one larger private domain, thereby countermanding restrictions on carrying objects from the private to the public domain on Sabbath and holidays.”  To the Crew of the Beagle this is an interesting cultural phenomena that we have not come across in any of our other voyages, the idea being that the string represents a theoretical boundary of one’s own dwelling, albeit in a public area.

 

 

In the evening, after the exercise of the day, the crew again found itself in Lincoln Road where the Captain entreated the crew to dine at an establishment offering victuals prepared following the traditions of Italy.  Again a lovely meal was shared by all.   When dinner was over, the crew set off to return to the Beagle, finding that the shipping lanes back to our mooring in Homestead were no longer densely clogged with other ship traffic – so often the case in the Miami area.  We arrived in good time with fair winds, albeit in the dark of night.

 

Here are some photos of the day and a short video of Haulover Beach.