Summer’s here. The afternoons fill up with storms, the boat ramp’s a zoo by eight on a Saturday, and by Thursday somebody in the group chat is already asking where we’re going.
So here’s a list. Not a ranking, because ranking these would just start fights, and the best one for you depends on who’s coming and how far you feel like running. Some you can do on a tank of gas and a packed cooler. Others take a little more planning than that. One of them you’ll be checking the forecast on for three days, talking yourself into it and back out again.
Peanut Island, for the days you don’t want to think too hard
If you’ve got people coming who don’t spend much time on boats, take them here first. Peanut Island sits just inside the Lake Worth Inlet, a short idle out of Riviera Beach, and the water off the sandbar on the north end is clear and green and shallow enough that nobody’s nervous about the kids. Drop the hook and wade in. The rocks by the old Coast Guard dock are good for snorkeling if anyone thought to bring a mask.
Go early, though. By noon on a July Saturday the place is a floating neighborhood, music carrying across the water, somebody’s dog paddling between the boats. I like it like that, personally. Plenty of people can’t stand it. Bring way more ice than you think you need.
Run north when you want it quiet
Some days the crowd is the point. Other days it’s the last thing you want, so you go the other direction.
Peck Lake, off the Intracoastal near Stuart, is the quiet one. Anchor on the west side, walk over the dune, and there’s a stretch of Atlantic beach on the far side that’s more or less yours for the afternoon. Worth the haul up to the Treasure Coast, or the run up from Palm Beach if your boat doesn’t mind the miles. Bring shoes for the walk. The path gets hot and there are sandspurs.
The big one: crossing to the Bahamas
This is the trip people plan a whole summer around. It’s worth it, mostly.
From the Lake Worth Inlet over to West End on Grand Bahama is around fifty-five to sixty nautical miles, and most of that is open Gulf Stream. On the right morning it’s about as good as boating gets. The water goes flat and blue, flying fish come off the bow, and twenty minutes out the bottom drops away under you and the color turns deep. You leave at first light, the sun comes up over open water, and a few hours later you’re tied up somewhere in the islands.
On the wrong morning it’s miserable, and once in a while it’s dangerous, so this is the trip where you slow down and do the homework. The Stream runs north. Put a north wind against it and the seas stack up steep and close together, and it gets ugly faster than you’d expect. So you wait for the window. A light breeze out of the south or east and a clean forecast, and you go. Anything with north in it, you drink your coffee on the dock and try again tomorrow.
Sort the paperwork before you leave the slip. Everybody aboard needs a passport, and you clear in through the Bahamas Click2Clear app these days, so set that up at home and not in the parking lot at dawn. Leave a float plan with someone on shore. Know what your boat really burns, not the brochure number, so you’re not doing nervous fuel math halfway across. Bring a VHF you know works.
Plenty of people make this crossing in smaller boats than you’d think. Plenty also make it in boats that shouldn’t be out there at all. Mostly it comes down to whoever’s at the helm, and whether they had the patience to wait for a good day.
What the run actually asks of your boat
Which brings me to the boat.
A lazy afternoon at the sandbar forgives just about anything that floats. The crossing doesn’t. You want range you can count on, and a hull that takes a head sea without pounding everyone into a bad mood. Enough seating and dry storage helps more than you’d think, too. Comfort sounds like a soft thing to worry about right up until about hour three.
This is the part I like talking about. The boats people run down here are well suited to this kind of water. A Regulator is happy offshore in a way that’s hard to describe until you’ve ridden one through a chop that should have rattled your teeth and somehow didn’t. Grady-White builds that SeaV2 hull that settles in and just goes, with a layout made for long days and a full crew. If you want one boat that covers the sandbar on Saturday and the fishing grounds on Sunday, a Robalo center console gives you a lot for the money. And for a family still warming up to all this, a dual console keeps everybody comfortable and gives you somewhere to put the people who’d rather lie in the sun than hold a rod.
Forget chasing the most expensive boat on the dock. Get the one that suits the trips you’ll really make, which takes a little honesty about which of these you’ll do and which you’re only daydreaming about.
Make the list shorter
The season’s already moving. The good crossing windows come and go on their own schedule, the sandbar days pile up whether you make them or not, and somehow it’s Labor Day before anybody feels ready. So pick one and run it this weekend. These
are some of the best places to boat in South Florida, and you’ve got a whole string of weekends ahead to get through them.
If your current boat isn’t quite up to the trip in your head, come talk to us. You’ll find the team at Mariner Marine and South Florida Yachts in Riviera Beach, and up at Sovereign Yachts in Stuart, and we’re glad to show you options and sort out what fits. You can also look through what’s in stock at firstclasswatercraft.com. We’re around all summer.
