Lake Worth

Location: North Palm Beach, FL
Position: N26 50.405 W080 03.212

We’re currently anchored at the north end of Lake Worth, near North Palm Beach, FL. Lake Worth is a long, shallow body of water that runs north and south of the Lake Worth Inlet at Palm Beach. We arrived here in the late afternoon of Friday, December 5 after a nice sail down from Ft. Pierce. We finally had a chance to try out the new windvane self steering and are happy to report that it worked fine. With a few adjustments and modifications to our setup we expect to use it a lot. We’re looking forward to using it when we cross to the Bahamas.

The high point of our visit here so far was the Christmas boat parade last Saturday night. We overheard the Coast Guard on the VHF telling someone it was going from Palm Beach all the way up to Jupiter Inlet! Being about a mile off the route, the best part for us was the fireworks. We’d never seen this before – a fireworks barge led the procession and there was a constant fireworks display taking place for the entire 1.5 hours we could see it. It was really amazing! Easily the longest lasting fireworks display we’ve ever witnessed, and a big hit around the anchorage. About every 5 minutes there was a big ‘grand finale’ type display and we’d think it was over but then it would start back up again. We sat up on the coach roof with a glass of wine and had a wonderful time. It wasn’t even cold!!!

On the down side, we’ve been here for nearly a week and still haven’t found any nice walks. There’s a grocery store a short walk from the dinghy landing and a chandlery about a mile away. Apparently there’s a hardware store about 2.5 miles away but unfortunately, all of these destinations are on busy streets that aren’t very pleasant to walk along. We understand there’s a pretty good bus system and for $3 you can ride all day. If we’re here long enough we’ll check that out, too.

We did discover a very nice state park (John D. MacArthur State Park) with a nature center, lovely walks, and a boardwalk to the beach, but it’s a couple of miles just to get to the entrance, and then another good half mile to actually get into the park. The walk from the dinghy landing to the park is on a very busy road lined with gated communities, guard houses, thick hedges, and chain link fences. No little side roads, no bike paths (except those we could see inside the gated communities) – it’s a long, noisy walk. We’ve heard about another anchorage closer to the inlet that is within a short dinghy ride to another, smaller park. We may move down there for a while after the wind shifts - we do like our walks, after all.

We’re stuck on the boat today while, in cruiser’s parlance, it’s “blowing like stink”. The wind is between 20-30 knots from the south making the anchorage pretty bouncy. The good news is the frontal boundary is scheduled to pass through at around 4:00 this afternoon, clocking around to the west where we have more protection and we expect things to settle down considerably by this evening.

It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting a weather window to cross to the Bahamas anytime soon. After today’s front, it sounds like it’s going to be blowing pretty steadily from the northeast, kicking up pretty high seas in the Gulf Stream. We’ll make the best of our stay here and, if a crossing window doesn’t open within the next week or so, will probably head down to Miami and try from there.

Fair winds,