New speed zones proposed in Palm Beach

Hi,

I wonder if any of the do gooders banging their drums about this are actually boaters themselves?

It reminds me of the people who buy a home under the fight path to a major airport then start all sorts of campaigns to get the airport closed and or operations restricted.

Is that the majority of the movement behind this? The people who bought in the ICW and are now tired of the wake hitting their sea wall?

Or is there a political front driving this as well?

These are people who want power, but all they can muster is slow speed zones and driving 50 mph in the left lane of I-95.

Put an offer in on a place on the water just north of the area in question last month. We wanted to see how busy it was, so we sat there a couple of weekends in a row to check out traffic. It was really hectic. I'm the last guy who wants to suggest a slow speed zone, but on the weekends/holidays it might be worth considering. Perhaps an over reaction due to the number of people on the water right now, but it seemed much busier than I remember from even a few years ago.

The water is essentially a public park but never underestimate the old guy who can afford the land next to the park to have the most opinionated position on what the old whippersnappers should do in his extended back yard he thinks he owns. It’s amazing how quickly conservatives tend to become liberals when they are bothered by the public rocking their boat when he their deed allows them to keep on public land.

Boaters who want to buzz around vs, homeowners who pay taxes there. Wonder who has the most clout. Hmmmm. Sounds like a done deal.

The ICW was intended for marine navigation., not a park. Classic overpopulation when species exceed the carrying capacity.

Actually the ICW was intended for commercial navigation.

Actually there's another group that supports the speed zones too and that's sail boat owners and trawler owners who constantly complain about getting waked in the ICW.

People sometimes ask to imagine things without speed zones and with skiers and PWC's and boats going faster and anchoring nearby and we simply say, "Yes, exactly like our home on the water. We're not in a speed zone, we have everything. We were not all that familiar with things here when we bought but one thing we knew even from the lake in NC is that living on the water, boats would go by regularly. To be able to sit on our patio and have boats passing by was a dream come true to us. What we have a hard time grasping is why people seem somehow surprised."

It reminds me of someone with a store on Federal Highway talking about how heavy the traffic is. Duh. You located there because of traffic count.

Or the boat that anchors just outside the channel and then complains about wakes.

Now on the other hand, when we want to really cruise and have fun, we go outside, don't try to do so in the ICW.

I can see the no wake on weekends in Broward County in the winter, since the ICW is only 100 yards wide +/-. There is SO much traffic on the weekends and I was out Saturday in a 25' whaler, it was a 3' washing machine of ricocheting wakes from hitting the seawalls back and forth that it would be a nightmare if you were in a slow boat with people passing you on plane left and right.

BUT, in Palm Beach and that area in Jupiter where the waterways are very wide (1/2 mile +/-) and a natural shoreline that absorbs the wake, I see no reason for the slow speed. It's always a few that ruin things for many.

I would support extending the wake zone on the South end of Jupiter Island all the way to the bridge because there is so much more traffic than there was 30 years ago, and it is dangerous. I would also support lifting some of no wake restriction on the North end of Jupiter Island from the Hobe Sound Bridge to Loblolly because there is less traffic, and those offsetting changes may mean no net change in transit time from Stuart to Jupiter.
I ride my Hobie paddle board 4 to 8 miles a day along the Jupiter Island shoreline and the wakes don’t bother me, in fact they may be helping my balance! I paddle outside of the channel so the only boats that scare me are small boats towing skiers, tubes, and wakeboards out of the channel which is illegal already.

Actually the shore line, along with the vegetation and wildlife that lives there get washed out by the wakes. At least in the populated places the wakes only damage people's seawalls, people's back yards and annoy the people who are causing them as they come back and back and back at them.