Lake Worth Lagoon

Coast Pilot 4 calls Lake Worth a long, narrow and shallow body of water, separated from the ocean by an island varying in width from 0.1 to 0.5 mile. The Intracoastal Waterway enters it at Mile 1014.1 and runs southward to the south end of the lake at Mile 1034.3. Outside the limits of the marked channels, the Coast Pilot says local knowledge is necessary to carry the best water.

How much draft can anchor here has two answers, and both come from the same edition of the same book. Chapter 10 says anchorage for craft drawing up to 8 feet is available in the vicinity of Palm Beach. Chapter 12 says anchorage for yachts drawing up to 14 feet is available in the buoyed channel on the east side of Lake Worth leading southward from the Port of Palm Beach main ship channel, and that the best area is immediately south of the ship channel.

The two sentences are not about the same spot – one names the neighborhood, the other the buoyed channel – but they are the two figures the 18 October 2026 Coast Pilot gives for anchoring in Lake Worth, and this page does not choose between them. Chapter 10 adds that there is no deepwater anchorage in the harbor, and that two offshore anchorage grounds lie close north and south of the channel entrance.

Lake Worth Inlet is a dredged cut through the barrier beach, 11 miles south of Jupiter Inlet Light and 31 miles north of Hillsboro Inlet Entrance Light. The entrance is protected by two jetties and the cut by revetments, and a federal project provides for a 35-foot entrance channel. The current velocity is 2.4 knots on the flood and 3.6 knots on the ebb.

Lake Worth Inlet Coast Guard Station is inside the entrance about 0.7 mile north of Peanut Island, on the west side of the Intracoastal Waterway. Coast Pilot 4 gives 561–844–4470 for information on local existing conditions.

Southward from Mile 1014.1: the Jerry Thomas Memorial Bridge (State Route A1A) at Mile 1017.2, fixed, 65 feet; Lake Worth Inlet at Mile 1018.4; the Flagler Memorial Bridge (State Route A1A) at Mile 1021.8, bascule, 24 feet; the Royal Park Bridge (State Route 704) at Mile 1022.6, bascule, 21 feet; the Southern Boulevard Bridge (State Route 80) at Mile 1024.7, bascule, 21 feet; and the Lake Worth Avenue bridge (State Route 802) at Mile 1028.8, bascule, 38 feet at the center and 35 feet elsewhere. Every one of those clearances is the Coast Pilot's.

At the south end of Lake Worth, Boynton Inlet is a small dredged cut through the outside beach, about 100 feet wide. The reported controlling depth over the bar and to the Intracoastal Waterway was 5 feet – reported in 1983. Route A1A crosses the inlet on a fixed span with a clearance of 18 feet, and an overhead power cable at the bridge has a clearance of 38 feet.