Anchored in Paradise: The “Liveaboards” of Coconut Grove

About 12 years ago, following the death of his wife from liver disease, Mike Ledwell decided to live out his saltwater dream. He swapped a solitary existence in a little cabin in the Arkansas woods for an even smaller home aboard a 39-foot sailboat, now anchored off of Dinner Key.  

“I traded the sounds of owls and wild turkeys for the sound of a manatee scratching its back on barnacles on the bottom of the boat,” he says. “At this time of year, this life is about as good as it gets.”  

Ledwell, 72, is one of an estimated 150 to 200 boaters who make up the colorful, vibrant and ever-changing liveaboard community tied to the marina docks in Coconut Grove or anchored just offshore. 

Among this fraternity are couples, single men and women, adventurers, families with children, loners and solo sailors, working people, self-sufficient searchers and many pets – lots of dogs, a few cats and the occasional bird – all seeking a home on the sea.  

  “We are seeing more people coming and staying longer,” said City of Miami marinas manager Donald Lutton, who oversees operations at one of the largest marinas on the East Coast. “We still have plenty of room to grow and we expect to do so.”  

Of liveaboards, Lutton said, “It’s a tough lifestyle. Not easy. But people find it a liberating thing. “   

The lifestyle suits Ledwell. He drops anchor off of Dinner Key each winter and stays for months. He commutes from his 39-foot sailboat, Tough Life, to shore for groceries and the gym in a tiny, one-of-a-kind dinghy he fashioned from foam and fiberglass.  “I deliberately made it a cartoon thing,” he said, “with eyes and a nose ring.”  

When temperatures climb in summer Ledwell usually sets sail for North Carolina. But this year he plans to add air conditioning to the boat and sweat it out here.  

Liveaboard veterans Evan Eustace and his wife Shuling Guo will keep moving. During the 17 years that Eustace has made a boat his home, sailing up and down the East Coast and throughout the Caribbean, Dinner Key has always been a favorite stop. “This is a welcoming, friendly community,” he said.  

The marina became even more welcoming after Guo gave birth to their daughter Nola.  She is now two and a half. Although their 40-foot Lagoon 400 catamaran, Selkie, is relatively spacious, a rambunctious toddler can shrink a living space. “What we like here is that we can walk to parks, restaurants, do the laundry, and go to storytime at the [Coconut Grove branch] library,” says Eustace, who also has a house in Philadelphia.     

Adds Guo: “One thing I like, traveling with our boat, is she can escape Philly’s cold winter and play outside, and make friends along the east coast. Because we constantly change the environment, she is developing an easygoing personality and gets along with new people.   

“Working and living in a small place lets us acknowledge what are the essential materials: food, water, books, several sets of clothes, and how to keep life simple.”  

Local liveaboards fall into three categories: those at the marina docks, who pay a monthly fee based on the length of their boat; those hooked up to a mooring ball anchored offshore – just east of the Dinner Key barrier islands – who pay about $400 a month; and those in the so-called “anchorage” outside of the city’s mooring field, who simply drop anchor and pay no rent at all.  

Customers of the marina – those at the dock and those in the mooring field – get access to a laundry room, bathrooms and showers and a small lounge in marina headquarters, at 3400 Pan American Drive. They have access to a dedicated tie-up space for their dinghies at Pier 7 and can also use a shuttle service available four times a day to and from the dock to their boat. As city customers, they also receive pump-out service for their boat’s sewage waste holding tank.   

Boaters in the anchorage who come ashore in dinghies tie up at a smaller city-provided dock, called the Seminole Dinghy Dock, located on the marina’s west side.  On request, boaters in the anchorage can also get free pump-out, according to Lutton. “We offer it as a courtesy in hopes of keeping the environment cleaner,” he said.  

While living aboard can be less expensive than life on land, it does take money well beyond the price of the boat. Eustace, 53, a native of Dublin, Ireland, is a software engineer, who works remotely. Guo, 39, is a graduate of China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, whose work is currently being shown at the Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami. Ledwell, a licensed practical nurse, lives on Social Security and savings.  

Anthony Mikel, who sails a 1980 Hunter 33 named Salt Therapy, pulled into the Dinner Key anchorage recently for the first time. He says that he and his two cats, Blue and Sailor, can live on $6,000 a year, a cost he covers with temporary labor gigs and odd jobs he finds on Craigslist.  

“I also have been known to fish and barter fresh fish in areas where it’s permitted,” Mikel, 47, said in an email. “I live simply, and I don’t have any bills.” He does all repairs and maintenance on the boat himself.   

Ledwell, Mikel, Eustace, and Guo all fit into a subset of liveaboards called cruisers; they live on a boat and travel to various ports. But there are also those, like Burt Korpela, who are more rooted, moving their boat only when an approaching hurricane chases them into more sheltered harbor.  

Korpela, 53, may have spent more time sleeping on the waters off Coconut Grove than almost anyone. He and his younger sister were raised as liveaboards by his mother and father, who founded Atlantis Marine Towing & Salvage, the business Burt now runs.  He and his ex-wife raised their two children, now grown, on the water.  

“Going to sleep to that sound of waves lapping against the hull – it’s a little bit of tranquility,” he says.  “It’s embedded in my brain.”  

 Korpela and his black dog Gustav, a Belgian Malinois, live in the anchorage on a 65-foot Hatteras. And because he is usually out there, he has been involved in several emergency rescues over the years. On the night of July 4, 2014, Korpela and his crewman Vincent Morenza responded daringly after a boat crash to stop a runaway 32-foot vessel in which two young people lay unconscious and critically injured. Four people were killed in that three-boat crash, one of the worst disasters in local boating history.  

Lending aid, and keeping an eye out for strangers – both in the mooring field and the anchorage – is part of the ethic of liveaboard life.  “We all know each other, and we police our own,” says Korpela. If a boat appears to be unsafe, is not anchored properly, or is suspected of being “a hobo boat of cruising gypsies… we will run them out,” he says.   

Although rare, violence can erupt. In November 2024 two liveaboard neighbors in the anchorage got into a fight that included a low-speed dinghy pursuit and one man firing a rifle and wounding the other, according to Miami police. The alleged shooter, Joseph R. Woodward, 44, was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He remains in jail without bond.  

The attraction of living on the blue-green waters of Biscayne Bay, especially when the weather is balmy and serene, is easy to see.  Yet many liveaboards in the anchorage – those outside the official marina boundaries – see storm clouds gathering.   

In 2023 Miami-Dade County’s Division of Environmental Resources Management (DERM) published the results of a study that identified 11 potential sites for consideration as “Anchoring Limitation Areas due to the presence of sensitive environmental resources such as seagrasses, inadequate water depths, and historic documentation of long-term vessel storage and vessel abandonment.”  Dinner Key is one of those areas.  

Earlier this year Florida Rep. Vicki Lopez (R-Miami), who represents part of Coconut Grove, introduced a bill that would empower local governments to establish stricter anchoring zones and limit anchoring to 30 days in any six-month period in populous counties such as Miami-Dade. That bill is currently before the State Affairs Committee.  

“We are not working on anything related to [the Dinner Key anchorage] right now,” DERM director Lisa Spadafina told the Spotlight. “But our purpose in looking is to try to prevent impacts to Biscayne Bay. Dinner Key is one of the areas where we remove lot of derelict vessels, and a place where you might consider placing a restriction.”  

The possibility of eviction from the anchorage is a hot topic. “Everybody is talking about it,” said Korpela.  “Everybody in the anchorage is worried.”  

In the meantime, the allure of life on local waters remains magnetic. 

“I’ve been sailing Florida’s East coast for the last two years looking for a home base, and I think I found it in Coconut Grove,” Mikel said. “The water in the vast anchorage is crystal clear, with plenty of sand. There is shore access through a dinghy dock provided by the [city]. Trash bins are available at the dinghy dock as well. That is a huge plus…  

“From this anchorage, you can be in the Florida Keys in one day, or the Bahamas, or the Dry Tortugas!” Mikel writes in an email. “The shopping is incredible, too. There are discount grocery stores, marine stores, hardware stores, restaurants, and public transportation all within walking distance of the dinghy dock. I love it!”