Dinner Key Marina and Coconut Grove – Captain Jane Reports (St. M. 1094.5)
Our fearless roving reporter, Captain Jane Tigar, turns her discerning eye to Dinner Key!
View from the marina office entrance. Note the wide fairway and how long a walk it can be from your boat to the gate!
A convenient stop on your way to the Keys is Dinner Key — not just for dinner, of which there is plenty offered — but maybe even for a day or two checking out the historic sites, not the boring it’s good for you kind of sites, the really fun kind of interesting sites as you’ll see in part 2 of this report.
This was our first visit and as some of the best things in life are, it was one we had not planned. Out mast too tall for the 56-foot Julia Tuttle Bridge, we seized a brief weather window to make the outside run from Lauderdale to Miami but needed a safe place to sit out the next storm. So, having at least advanced our position if not to The Keys to at least a place with Key in its name, we found ourselves waiting out the weather at Dinner Key Marina owned by the city of Miami. At $2.50 a foot plus tax for a slip with hook-ups, it’s hardly a bargain by more northern standards, but it’s a real deal compared with close to $4 a foot in nearby Miami and, for our touring tastes at least, there’s much more to do and see within walking distance of our boat.
There are almost 600 slips at the modern cement fixed docks; during the second week of January, transient slips appeared plentiful. During this stormy weekend, we found ourselves comfortable and well protected from the winds and waves on adjacent Biscayne Bay.
Moorings are plentiful here — over 200! — for boats 40 feet LOA and under at $18 plus tax per night. Call ahead though as there are moorings in depths of as little as 4 feet; marina staff told us there was plenty of room for a 5-foot draft and that despite the written maximum of 40 ft, they could take a boat up to 42 feet LOA. Depths may improve by spring as a $1.4 million 7-month dredging project in the marina has been underway since December 2009. There is shuttle service that runs on demand during the week and on the half hour during weekends between the mooring field and the main dock; schedules are at the office.
In contrast with Vero Beach Municipal Marina, this is the kind of marina a cynic would imagine a city marina would be. We were welcomed on VHF Channel 68 with somewhat unclear directions to our slip. This was followed by what my first rate first mate calls “the unobtrusive” style of docking assistance. Not only did no one in a bright colored parka wave to us and with a smile point out our slip, no one even at the last minute offered to take a line. There was, to put it simply, no one to help us. On the other hand, fairways are twice as wide as most marinas so it is easy to maneuver and spin around. Oh, and what the heck, it’s good to know that the marina staff has confidence in our docking skills. Be sure, however, to ask which side of the numbered pier your slip is on. The slips are not numbered with all the odd numbers on one side of the pier and all even numbers on the other.
Clean showers and heads are adjacent to the marina office, all of which is in what I call prison architectural style. If you are at a slip, bear in mind that it can be a very long walk to these facilities. The good news is pump outs are easy — a mobile pump out service is available. Laundry machines look good, but this is such a huge marina for the number of machines, I would not count on this as a laundry stop unless you don’t mind practicing the fine art of getting on line for a set of machines. I’ve seen more machines at marinas a fourth of its size.
There is no fuel available at Dinner Key Marina, but there is fuel at two adjacent locations, though at Grove Harbour Marina where there is a Shell sign, we were unable to find anyone to help us and we refueled much later down the water way.
While we did not sense the lively community “it’s camp!” spirit of Vero Beach City Marina and Marathon City Marina, perhaps this was due to everyone huddling in their boats during the cold snap that caused our four-day stay here.
DIY Docking at Dinner Key Marina
Dinner Key — still worthy of its name.
At first glance, Coconut Grove looks like an over-developed city — much like Lauderdale, just smaller. But if you walk just a few blocks from the Marina, it quickly morphs into a charming village of shops and restaurants. If you want to eat out, it appears the Dinner Key appellation still holds and you have a lot of non-chain choices — Italian, Thai, Japanese, Argentinian, French, Spanish … From the marina office, walk to your left and then follow the edge of the marina, past the small commercial fishing vessels and to the main street. Cross the street and head slightly up hill and you’ll start to see the “charming” part of Coconut Grove, hang a left onto Main Avenue and you’ll find lots to choose from.
For us, this stay, partly due to the excellent provisioning opportunity here (see below) was Dinner on the Boat Key, so we have no restaurant reviews to share. However, it was the weekend of Taste of the Grove, a food and music charity fundraiser held in Peacock Park adjacent to the marina. We can tell you that the items we sampled there at lunch, promising non-chain restaurants include: Atchana’s East/West Kitchen inside the Mutiny Hotel, just across from the Marina; Mayfair Grill at the Mayfair Hotel (excellent pork and jicama salad; and great skirt steak). First mate Michael vouches for Al Fresco’s penne a la vodka. The food at the Ideas restaurant which features “authentic food from Spain” also looked good, but we got full too soon. The Chart House also had attractive looking offerings. We also passed by a restaurant called Focaccio Rustica that looked excellent.
Easy Provisioning Stop
For those who prefer to dine on board, this is an excellent provisioning stop. If you don’t follow your iPhone GPS directions, the Fresh Market, a high end super market, is a 10-minute walk to the right (facing the land) basically tracking the shore line and walking through parking lots, going past City Hall in its historic building and Grove Harbour Marina.
If you are here on a Wednesday, which we were not, check out the Green Market in town; it’s open from 11 to 4 PM. It’s supposed to have locally grown organic produce, local honey and local prepared foods. It’s in the Mayfair Atrium, in the main “cute” shopping area described above.
While we would have preferred no storms and no record cold snaps, we thank the inclement weather for getting us stuck at Dinner Key.
Jane Tigar
S/V Lady Jane
Stayed at Dinner Key as well, agree with the total lack of signage, very little (none) help from the staff, moored out in the middle of Biscayne bay, nasty chop. Old men have more water pressure than the showers, pump out was doityourself with no assistance and the pump didn’t work. Too many white shirts with VHF radios, nobody gets their hands dirty.They can learn a lot from Vero Beach. Not a good experience
Peter Marrek
Our experience exactly ….including non responsive dock hands, ….difficulty in finding slip numbers….etc. etc.
But we love the downtown area and have taken public transportation to downtown Miami….recomend on sunday only. we checked in here upon returning from the Bahamas and had to go to the cruise ship area to check in.
Pierre McCormick
Click Here To View the Eastern Florida Cruisers’ Net Marina Directory Listing For Dinner Key Marina
Click Here To Open A Chart View Window, Zoomed To the Location of Dinner Key Marina
Comments from Cruisers (1)
If the customer service in most places in Miami is subpar, then the service at Dinner Key Marina is absolute garbage. The kind of service that makes you immediately regret having moved to Miami (and I speak fluent Spanish). The kind of service that forces you to set aside ample time to sit down and write a juicy, one star review just like the one that you are about to read. So you do not mistake this review for one coming from a non-credible source, I should probably mention that I am a USCG licensed Captain (50 ton Master) and a Cambridge engineering graduate with 20 years of boating experience. Also for the record, I have never really written a review before, but this nightmare could not have gone unpublished. Here is the sequence of events:
1. I signed a one year contract with the marina for a commercial slip in August of 2014. The plan was to run charters to small groups of elite guests aboard my 41-foot Maxum. Having endured a 3-hour long trip down from Fort Lauderdale, my father and I finally pulled into our allocated slip. The very next morning, we were rudely woken by a bunch of goons banging on the fiberglass, asking why we had parked there. They had chained the boat to the seawall. I kindly replied that I had signed a one year contract for that spot. They later unchained the boat and barely made an apology. That is Dinner Key Marina’s idea of a welcome, apparently.
2. One week following my arrival, I drove up to Orlando for a few days. There, the local police came knocking on my door announcing that they had found a boat registered to my name up on a beach in Fort Pierce (about 125 miles north of Miami). Long story short, a ring of drug smugglers stole my 41 Maxum from Dinner Key Marina. I still wonder if it was not someone from the marina who tipped off my absence. It took 3 months of investigations by the USCG, DEA, and the local Sheriff’s department, and an additional 3 months of quoting repairs before I recouped the money from the insurance company (the boat was declared a total loss). Dinner Key Marina did not help out with anything and did not even express their sympathies for what had happened. I later suggested that they install a camera to monitor that pier (Pier 9) and they really could not have cared less.
3. I returned to the marina with a new Concept 36. Why do you ask? Because none of the other 30 odd marinas in Miami had availability for commercial vessels. I should also mention that although Dinner Key Marina welcomes commercial vessels, they are not zoned for commercial use. I found that out following a visit to the City Hall trying to get my zoning permit. So technically, everyone there operating commercially is illegal. The operations lady at the Dinner Key Marina, Maria Busto, one of the most impolite, ill-intentioned, dysfunctional individuals I have ever had the displeasure to meet, had promised me following the theft of the 41 Maxum, that she would give me priority on my original slip. Sure enough, when I returned to the marina with the Concept 36, she had given it away to somebody else and left me with a slip amidst a bunch of shrimping boats. Just for the record, all of the frustrating experiences delineated above were delivered almost exclusively by her, Maria Busto. Do not waste even a second of your time with her. Talk directly to Stephen Bogner, the manager, anytime you need assistance. I found this out too late. He is of great character and although he does not have much control over what goes on in his marina, he means well.
4. My dad fell ill in early 2016 and I was forced to move back to Orlando to tend to him. I terminated my contract with Dinner Key Marina under this premise. My dad just passed away from heart failure at the age of 55. Even knowing about these circumstances, it took Dinner Key Marina nearly 4 months to refund my deposit. E-mails went unanswered almost every time. Every time I called in, no one was around even during business hours. Simply unbelievable.
5. Summarizing, this was the worst experience I have had with any company in my entire life. I failed to mention the countless times I had to fend off people trying to steal my stuff at the dock (and they did), obnoxious fishermen tossing garbage around and having to pick up after them, birds crapping shrimp guts all over my boat, vandalism, and daily encounters with ill-tempered employees of the marina (with a few exceptions, including Renato, an awesome security guy). Come here at your own peril. This place is a disaster. It will drain you emotionally and ruin your life!