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Florida registers more boats than any other state and the sheltered water is why.
Charlotte Harbor, between Charlotte and Lee counties, is the largest protected bay on the Gulf coast and the reason the canal neighborhoods there were built. Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay are the same idea further north. Pine Island Sound and the passes around Sanibel and Captiva run inside the barrier islands. On the Atlantic, the Intracoastal Waterway runs the whole length of the state behind the beach, from Fernandina down to Miami, so you can travel the coast without going outside. The Keys give you both Atlantic and Gulf from the same dock. Every coastal county runs public ramps, and anyone born after 1988 needs a boating safety education card.
Charlotte County. The state gives its size as 42,518 acres in one place and about 46,000 in another, and most of that is not walkable ground at all: it is mangrove shoreline, tidal creek and salt marsh held undeveloped to keep the estuary intact.
Open the guide →Charlotte County. Not on the Gulf. This one is on Charlotte Harbor at 4500 Harbor Boulevard, which is why it has a boat ramp and a canoe and kayak launch as well as sand.
Open the guide →Lee County. Sanibel lies east and west where almost every other barrier island on this coast lies north and south, and it sits on a shallow plateau reaching out into the Gulf.
Open the guide →Pinellas County. 1,136 acres across five connected islands at the mouth of Tampa Bay, the largest park Pinellas County runs and one that takes more than 2.7 million visits a year. North Beach and East Beach give almost three miles of white sand with swim centers and food concessions.
Open the guide →Palm Beach County. At the Boynton Inlet in Ocean Ridge. Guarded, with a playground, picnic pavilions and a marina.
Open the guide →Monroe County. At 36850 Overseas Highway on Big Pine Key, open 8 a.m. until sunset, 365 days a year, for $8 a vehicle plus a 50-cent county charge a head. Three beaches, Sandspur, Loggerhead and Calusa, with the old Bahia Honda bridge standing behind them.
Open the guide →Okaloosa County. Crab Island is not an island but a raised sandbar on the north side of the Destin bridge at the mouth of Choctawhatchee Bay, in water one to four feet deep.
Open the guide →Florida's tubing runs are spring-fed, so the water is clear and cool, around seventy degrees, in August as much as in March.
The surf is on the Atlantic side. The Gulf is flat most of the year and only breaks in a storm.
You want steady side-on wind and shallow, flat water, which means the sound and bay sides rather than the open ocean.
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