Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

Still tons of anchorages

The anchoring situation is actually better than it was years ago. Florida passed a statewide law that prohibits localities from enacting their own anchoring restrictions on most boats. There is currently a Pilot Program that allows five places, St. Augustine, Stuart/Martin County, Monroe County (Keys), Sarasota, and St. Petersburg, to set up "pilot" anchoring ordinances, and they all have either done so or are in the process of doing so. In most cases these will consist of reasonable time limits on anchoring, like 30 to 90 days, and offsets from mooring fields. A bunch of us are fighting to make these ordinances as cruiser friendly as possible. But, overall you can anchor more places in Florida than you could 10 years ago because of the state law, and there are less cruisers right now due to the poor economy, so anchoring is no problem. I'm adding a bunch of new anchorages to the sixth edition of my ICW chartbook, which I am working on right now.

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