Miami to Key West: A 7-Day One-Way Motor Yacht Itinerary

Embarkation runs from the marinas around Government Cut and Miami Beach — thirty to forty-five minutes from MIA or FLL, with the crew waiting dockside and the provisioning already struck below. The first afternoon is a shakedown cruise past the skyline and the cruise-ship row, a swim off Biscayne Bay's flats if the group wants water immediately, and the chart briefing for the run south.

Dinner is Miami's one contribution to the week — aboard against the lit skyline, or ashore at whatever table the group's tastes demand while the city is still within tender range. Tomorrow the chain begins.

The longest leg of the week goes first: forty-four miles south, under three hours on the flybridge, with Biscayne Bay narrowing into the start of Hawk Channel and the reef line picking up the water's color to starboard. Lines go out as the depth changes — the reef edge works from the first morning.

Key Largo announces the Keys with its best asset underwater: the marine-sanctuary reefs sit minutes off the marina, and the afternoon goes to snorkeling or a guided dive on coral heads that made this town the self-declared dive capital of the world. First marina night of the chain; conch fritters non-optional.

A one-hour hop opens a full Islamorada day. The town calls itself the sport-fishing capital of the world and staffs the claim: flats skiffs pole the backcountry for bonefish and tarpon, the offshore fleet works the hump for tuna and mahi, and the marina scales weigh the evidence nightly. The crew books whichever version fits the group — or rigs the yacht's own cockpit and settles it directly.

For the non-fishing contingent the day is sandbars and swim platforms: the flats north of the chain run knee-deep and bathwater-warm for miles. Evening at a marina restaurant where the kitchen cooks the afternoon's catch — the Keys' oldest and best transaction.

Two easy hours south, the bridges counting down overhead — forty-two of them stitch the chain together, and the biggest waits at the end of the day's run. Marathon is the Keys' working middle: a boatyard-and-fish-house town without Key West's costume, anchored by Boot Key Harbor's liveaboard fleet and the approach to the Seven Mile Bridge, which is exactly as photogenic from a flybridge as advertised.

The afternoon offers the Turtle Hospital for families, the bridge run for the photographers, and Sombrero Reef — one of the chain's best snorkel sites — for everyone else. Night in the slip; the lower Keys open tomorrow.

The second of the week's two long legs, and the chain's loveliest: the lower Keys thin out into mangrove backcountry and National-Wildlife-Refuge water, the traffic disappears, and the reef edge keeps the lines honest for a final trolling pass. Under three hours of running lands the boat in Key West by early afternoon.

Arrival timing is deliberate — slip secured, showers taken, and the group on Mallory Square for the sunset celebration their first evening, with Duval Street's opening arguments afterward. Two nights here; the town gets the time it deserves.

A full Key West day, on foot: the Hemingway Home and its six-toed cats, the Custom House's shipwreck-salvage history, the Bight's working waterfront, and the galleries, rum bars, and pastel streets that make the town the chain's whole closing argument. Everything sits inside a mile of the slip.

Groups with energy for one more swim get it — the tender runs to the harbor sandbars — and the last dinner splits between the chef's saved-best aboard and the town's white-tablecloth rooms. The captain confirms morning transfer timing; EYW is ten minutes away.

Breakfast aboard and a ten-minute taxi to Key West International — no backtracking, no delivery run, no customs. The boat heads home on the repositioning leg without you; the whole chain stays run-once behind the stern. The only decision left is which of the week's two long-leg mornings gets retold first.