Miami Sunset Cruise Guide: Biscayne Bay and Millionaire's Row

The reason to take a boat at sunset, rather than watch from the beach, is that the beach sees the sun set behind the city. From the water you watch the city light up instead, which is the better view and the less obvious one.

The route

A standard two-hour Miami sunset cruise leaves from the marina, runs out through the cut between Key Biscayne and Virginia Key, turns north up Biscayne Bay, and comes back along the shoreline with the skyline on your right. The loop passes, in order, the PortMiami cranes and the cruise ships, Fisher Island and the mansions, the Brickell towers, and the causeway as you come back in.

The whole point of the geometry is that you see Miami in two passes. Outbound, the towers are ahead of you and the water is empty. Return, the towers are beside you and lit up, and the port is on your other side. Most people only ever see one of those.

When the light actually happens

Those times shift by an hour either way across the year. In June the sunset is around 8:10pm and the whole sequence moves later. Check the actual sunset time for the date you are travelling, and aim to be on the water 45 minutes before it.

Millionaire's Row

Along the southern tip of Miami Beach, facing the bay, is a strip of about forty waterfront mansions on Indian Creek. It is the most expensive real estate in Florida by a distance, and from the water it is a wall of architecture with no public access behind it.

The buildings you can actually identify are the white, blocky Deco-modern one at 1000 Ocean Drive, the Cuban Memorial Boulevard scale of the harbour beyond it, and the low green bulk of the golf course on the island behind. Seeing it from a boat is the only sensible way, and it is one of the more surreal stretches of urban geography in the United States.

What to bring

• A light layer. It is on the water, and even in November the wind off Biscayne Bay drops the temperature noticeably after sunset. A windbreaker is more useful than a coat.
• Sunscreen. You will be out for two hours with the sun on you the whole way.
• Your own water. It is on the boat, but in a cup that you will spill.
• Flat shoes. The boarding ladder into the boat is a step down and a step back up, and the deck is wet after 8pm.
• A phone with a clip or a strap. The light is genuinely good and the deck moves.

Boat or convertible

A fair question, because both show you the skyline at sunset. They are not the same thing at all.

If you can only do one, do the boat. The skyline from the water is the image that stays with people, and the waterfront is the part of Miami that you cannot get anywhere else.

Boarding, and what the crew actually does

Boarding is at a floating dock, so there is a step ladder and a crew member counting heads. The boat is a proper passenger vessel with shade, seating, a bathroom and a crew, not a pontoon with a speaker. The music is on, there is a drink, and the crew will point out the landmarks as you pass them.

The one thing worth knowing: the boat goes out at 6:30pm regardless of the sunset time, so in summer you are on the water long before the light and back after dark, and in December you are on the water in the last of the golden hour. Either way it works, because the route takes you past the skyline twice.