As the waters closed over the 41 foot Tartan sailboat Spiritus, her captain closed his eyes, holding back tears. The captain of the freighter that had just rescued him from his doomed vessel stood with him, silent, hand on his shoulder, a fellow seaman feeling the gut wrenching pain of the loss.
This isn’t the beginning of some lurid novel. This happened a few days ago off Port Canaveral. The Palm Beach police ordered a local sailor, a member of the Palm Beach Sailing Club who was anchored in the historic Lake Worth Lagoon anchorage, to leave. They were prepared to tow his boat, a tow that would cost $2500 plus dockage plus a $250 fine to the town. They made it quite plain to him that the moment he was off his boat and they came by, his boat was gone.
Why did this happen?
He was forced to leave a safe, secure anchorage because of an update to Palm Beach’s ordinance, 74-267 (b)(1) establishing an overnight anchoring limitation area. The ordinance was made possible by the passing of SB 481 in the 2025 Florida legislative session.
This captain – he’s asked me to not use his name – had spent $50,000 over the previous year to refit his boat and he was nearly done with the work. His plan was to move 100 nm north to Titusville to haul and bottom paint. He’d already had the engine rebuilt, but it had not been sea-trialed.
On the voyage north to the Cape Canaveral Inlet, something went wrong. A frontal passage that arrived too soon with high winds and ten to twenty foot seas made it impossible to get inside to safety without an engine, and the engine would not start.
Because he was single handing, it wasn’t possible to go below in those conditions to deal with the problem. The boat started taking on water, and a distress call went out. The captain was rescued by a nearby freighter the USCG contacted. He lost everything but his phone and wallet.
It didn’t need to happen this way.
SB 481, which I and other boating advocates fought against in the Florida Legislature, does two things – it limits anchoring in counties over 1.5 million to 30 days every six months, and it permits municipalities in those counties to enact local legislation. This runs contrary to the provisions of FL § 327.60, which had, until this bill passed, protected boaters from arbitrary local ordinances since 2007.
Historically, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission approved of 327.60, because it kept everyone in the state equal, and made enforcing the law easier.
Palm Beach, following the passage of SB 481, responded with an overnight anchoring limitation matching the state legislation, effectively ending an anchorage for local boaters that had existed for over 100 years.
If you’ve followed the anchoring wars in Florida, you’re well aware that the state’s anti anchoring laws are driven by wealthy waterfront homeowners who object to seeing boats anchored anywhere in their view. It’s not about derelicts or seagrass damage, protecting manatees or whatever else the locals dream up. There are already laws in place to deal with these issues. A new law was not needed.
Florida politicians, recognizing that wealthy homeowners are their bread and butter, have chosen to ignore their responsibility to ensure the public trust rights of boaters to use the waters of the state, and the realities of south Florida. Those realities include the fact that there is no long term dockage available for the 165 boats in the anchorage within 50 miles of Palm Beach, that there are waitlists of as much as three years for dockage, and that the cost of dockage is astronomical. A 40 foot catamaran in southeast Florida was recently quoted $16,000 for six months. In Fort Lauderdale and area, there are seven boats standing in line for every slip that comes open. If Jesus, Joseph and Mary showed up on a brand new, million dollar Hallberg-Rassy, they’d be waitlisted. There is no room at the inn.
Seriously, who can afford those prices for dockage? Certainly not your average sailor. This trend, if it continues, will eventually eliminate the middle class boater and decimate the marine industry, but that’s a discussion for another day.
The big question, one that Florida legislators bluntly refused to answer is this one: Where are these boats (and the hundreds more in other areas of Florida) supposed to go? Where, just tell us where. Florida’s elected representatives have never answered that question.
In this instance, this captain had purchased his boat to refit it. He’d just spent $50,000 doing so. He had sailed into Palm Beach from a seven month stay in the Bahamas. His plans once done were to continue voyaging.
Palm Beach was a stopover, someplace to finish up his work. He was doing something that every long term boater has done, that I have done, and probably you also – stopped in an exotic location to fix the boat, as the saying goes.
Was he over the 30 day limit? Yes, he was. Was the boat derelict? Well, here’s a photo of her, you decide. She looks pretty decent to me.
Did he make a bad decision? It appears so, but as he said to me, “I realize that I am ultimately responsible for the mistakes made on my boat. The intense pressure to leave Palm Beach was a huge contributing factor to my ultimate loss of my boat.”
That doesn’t sound like an irresponsible captain to me. Mistakes in judgement happen in boating. The Titanic, the 183 foot Bayesian in the Mediterranean in 2024, the freighter Summit Venture hitting the Tampa Bay Skyway bridge, or the more recent accident in Baltimore…
This captain wasn’t allowed to finish his work. He was ordered out of the anchorage by the police, in violation of their own rules mandating that they provide him with proper notice. Proper notice wasn’t given, but hey! It’s Palm Beach, why should these incredibly wealthy people and their officials be bothered by the rules the rest of us have to follow? Belay that, matey!
Palm Beach ordinance 74-267 (e) (3) Notifications, mandates that the Town of Palm Beach must proceed as follows after tagging a vessel:
“written notice shall be sent via U.S. Postal Service by certified mail, return receipt requested, to the registered owner and any lienholder of the vessel, irrespective of whether the vessel is occupied or unoccupied.
That didn’t happen, nor to my understanding has anyone else ordered out of the Lagoon received a mailed notice. It appears as if the Town of Palm Beach is in violation of its own laws. If true, that doesn’t surprise me, given how they attempted to pass SB 594, a bill designed to eliminate anchoring in Lake Worth Lagoon, in the 2025 session (https://theothertack.
Thus far, about twenty boats have been towed out of Lake Worth Lagoon, out of a total of 165 boats. More have moved rather than risk being towed. There are a few that are simply too deep draft or too high a mast to go elsewhere – including an $8 million racing sailboat whose owner just happens to live in Palm Beach. Funny how that works.
However, surprisingly (or not!), very few of the removed boats are derelicts. In fact, the few derelict boats in the Lagoon are being ignored. Why? The cynic in me says that Sea Tow, who is impounding these vessels at their docks in Stuart (hello Sunset Bay Marina!), knows that they won’t get paid for the derelicts.
Instead, they tow boats such as this Moody 41, which is in excellent condition, insured and properly registered – whose owner, I’m sure coincidentally, was out of the country at the time.
Sea Tow charges $4 per foot per day for storage, and according to staff at the marina (hello Sunset Bay Marina!), long term dockage comes out to about $1 per foot per day. So Sea Tow – a company that supposedly supports boaters – their local franchise is making a killing on storage fees. The Moody was generating $123 per day, plus the towing charge.
Sunset Bay Marina of course is pleased to have its docks rented out, but honestly, I will never again go to that marina, or any marina managed by the Oasis Group, now known as The Alliance Group (https://www.facebook.com/
A list of their marinas is appended to the bottom of this article in order to assist you in making better decisions about where you take your boat.
The actual villain here is the Town of Palm Beach. They gave in to the whining and crying of their wealthy residents, including Sylvester Stallone – yes, Rocky himself, who want the boats off the water.
Stallone first tried to get a local change made by getting approval to install a seaweed barrier. That met with a great deal of local opposition, and the project engineer, who is quoted in the Palm Beach Daily News, stated “Reducing boat traffic in the area is a secondary, not primary, goal of the barrier”.
The US Army Corps of Engineers contradicted him, stating “The primary purpose (of the barrier) was to exclude boaters from coming near the property”.
Let’s hear what Rocky, friend of the downtrodden on the silver screen, had to say about this. “”There’s a lot of traffic that comes in there, because of our notoriety,” he’s quoted as stating. That’s his “seaweed” right there, his justification for a barrier.
At the end of the council meeting, during which Stallone withdrew his request for the barrier, a Palm Beach Daily News article stated that “he is working with President-elect Donald Trump, with whom he is friends, on the issue”, said issue being boats at anchor in the area.
On withdrawing his application, Stallone’s neighbor Susan Gary said “”We cannot thank you enough. And we’re so willing to work with you on the derelict boats and prohibiting the mooring fields along our shores.”
Pardon me, but “our shores”? Did she really say that?
I guess she didn’t see the irony in her statement to the council, as quoted by the Daily News: “If you buy a house near an airport, don’t complain about the airplane noise.” So it seems that doesn’t apply to complaining about boats if you buy a house on the water. Sometimes the hypocrisy of these people makes me gag, it truly does.
And Stallone, who presents himself as a supporter of the little guy? Sure, as long as you’re not anywhere on public waters near his backyard, it’s all good. You go, Rocky!
But I digress. Palm Beach has actively worked against the one solution to this problem* – a mooring field. It’s not that a mooring field wouldn’t work, it’s that looking at those boats, even safely stored, would upset Stallone and Susan Gary, and we can’t have that now, can we?
Local boaters are not taking this issue lying down. A lawsuit has just been filed by boater Marty Minari contesting the removals, and a request for a temporary injunction to stop the removals will be presented.
Did this captain make mistakes? Yes, and he acknowledges that as any good captain does. “I realize that I am ultimately responsible for the mistakes made on my boat. The intense pressure to leave Palm Beach was a huge contributing factor to my ultimate loss of my boat.”
I suppose we must be grateful that this captain, who has asked for his name to be withheld, wasn’t killed, in spite of the “intense pressure” put on local boaters to leave.
That being said, the town of Palm Beach, it’s administration, the local police, and I’ll include Sylvester Stallone and Susan Gary in this accounting, have a lot to answer for.
Why should a tiny town such as Palm Beach with its population of 9,000, of which an even tinier portion, the 150 to 350 who actually live on the waters facing the ICW, get control over what 1.5 million people in the county actually have rights to, that being the waters and the use of the Lake Worth Lagoon? Waters that, just to be very clear on this, are supposed to be managed by the state as a public trust in the interest of all Floridians – not just the privileged 150 – 350 who live on the banks of the Lake Worth Lagoon?
Stallone’s mansion cost him $35.375 million in 2020. I guess that buys you a lot of ass kissing from local politicians.
Governor DeSantis, are you listening? You modeled yourself last year as a huge supporter of boaters and the boating lifestyle, even as SB 481 was being passed. We need to hear from you, Sir.
If those of you reading this want to help the boaters of Palm Beach fight this injustice on behalf of all boaters, you can contribute to their legal defense fund at https://www.gofundme.com/f/
Update – as of February 25, I am investigating a report of a boat that came in from offshore to anchor in the Lake Worth Lagoon and was ordered out of the Lagoon that same day by the Palm Beach Police Department. If this turns out to be true, and we can locate the boater, we will seek legal action against the Town of Palm Beach based on their violation of state law permitting boaters to anchor for up to 30 days.
* Further update – as of February 27, the West Palm Beach Police Department has advised the Sailing Club that they are going to seek an ordinance to eliminate any anchoring at all in the Lagoon.
The following are marinas managed by The Alliance Group (formerly Oasis) which includes Sunset Bay Marina & Anchorage in Stuart.
• The Yards Marina (Washington, D.C.)
• The Wharf Marina (Washington D.C.)
• National Harbor Marina (Maryland)
• Harbor East Marina (Baltimore, MD)
• Lighthouse Point Marina (Baltimore, MD)
• Inner Harbor Marina (Baltimore, MD)
• Baltimore Yacht Basin (Baltimore, MD)
• Annapolis Town Dock (Annapolis, MD)
• Sunset Harbor Marina (Essex, MD)
• Gunpowder Cove Marina (Joppa, MD)
• Maryland Yacht Club (Pasadena, MD)
• Coles Point Marina and RV Resort (Hague, VA)
• Hope Springs Marina (Stafford, VA)
• Norview Marina (Deltaville, VA)
Florida and Southeast
• Fernandina Harbor Marina (Fernandina Beach, FL)
• St. Augustine Marine Center (St. Augustine, FL)
• Sea Isle Marina (Miami, FL)
• Dania Beach Marina (Dania Beach, FL)
• Cape Haze Marina (Placida, FL)
• Four Fish Marina (Jensen Beach, FL)
• Westshore Yacht Club (Tampa, FL)
• Sunset Bay Marina & Anchorage
• Hutchinson Island Marina (Stuart, FL)
• Northwest Creek Marina (New Bern, NC)
• Big Water Marina & Campground (Starr, SC)
New England and Northeast
• Mystic Point Marina (Mystic, CT)
• Noank Shipyard (Noank, CT)
• Seaboard Marina (Glastonbury, CT)
• Old Harbor Marina (Clinton, CT)
• Thamesport Marina (New London, CT)
• The Crescent Marina (Greenport, NY)
• Harris Bay Yacht Club (Lake George, NY)
Great Lakes and Midwest
• North Coast Harbor Marina (Cleveland, OH)
• Port Lorain Marina (Lorain, OH)
• Battery Park Marina (Sandusky, OH)
• Black River Wharf Marina (Lorain, OH)
• Doyne’s Marine (Portage, IN)
