Point the bow south from Clearwater Pass and you can be anchored off a beach no road reaches before lunch, on a mooring ball by dinner, and still have four days of coast in front of you. Florida's Gulf side breaks into four natural legs, each an easy daylight run, and a protected waterway carries you through nearly all of it — until the last one, which does not.
Two numbers shape every day of it. The federal waterway behind the barrier islands is a 9-foot by 100-foot project, and the Coast Pilot's own caution is that channels may shoal several feet between maintenance dredgings. The fixed ceiling on that route is 65 feet — the Sunshine Skyway's waterway span, the Pinellas Bayway and Sarasota's Ringling Causeway all sit at that height. Under 65 feet of air draft and about five feet of keel, this coast opens up. Over either, you plan around it.
Leg one: St. Joseph Sound and the boat-only beaches
Clearwater Pass is a 74-foot fixed span, so the Gulf gate here costs no bridge arithmetic. Inside, the run north to Dunedin sits behind the Dunedin Causeway bascule — 24 feet closed, tender on VHF 9, at waterway Mile 141.9.
Caladesi Island is the payoff. The state park's C-Dock is open for day use with 26 slips and neither power nor water, reached through a privately marked channel into Seven Mouth Creek just west of Mile 141.1, with 4 feet reported there in 2006. The constraint on this leg is the passes you cannot use. Dunedin Pass was reported shoaled to a foot and closed to navigation in 1984, and Hurricane Pass carried 3 to 5 feet with local knowledge in a 1982 report. Run inside through St. Joseph Sound and let Clearwater Pass be your only Gulf door.
Leg two: the sandbars at the mouth of Tampa Bay
The waterway runs 13 miles through Boca Ciega Bay, where tidal currents seldom exceed half a knot. Shell Key spreads 1,800 acres of boat-access-only shoreline between Pass-a-Grille and Fort De Soto, its central core closed as a bird preservation area and overnight camping allowed by county permit in the southern public use area only. Fort De Soto next door runs 1,136 acres across five keys with more than seven miles of waterfront; the St. Petersburg guide covers the marina side.
Getting back out to the Gulf rewards patience. Bunces Pass reported shoaling to less than a foot over its unmarked outer bar in 2001, with a stake-marked 3-foot channel into the Mullet Key Bayou small-craft anchorage. Egmont Channel is the grown-up alternative: a 45-foot federal project depth in from the Gulf, past the national wildlife refuge on Egmont Key, with shoals five miles seaward and ebb at 2 knots or more. Passage Key Inlet, the chart's shortcut, is unmarked and shifting at about 9 feet, and unexploded ordnance was reported in the surrounding shoals in 2020 — take Egmont Channel and don't think about it again.
Leg three: Sarasota Bay, where the bridges write the schedule
South of Anna Maria the day is governed by a bascule ladder, and knowing it in advance is the difference between a pleasant run and six hours of hovering. North to south: Anna Maria Island at 24 feet (Mile 89.2), Cortez at 22 feet (Mile 87.2), the fixed Ringling Causeway at 65 feet (Mile 73.6), Siesta Drive at 25 feet (Mile 71.6), Stickney Point at 18 feet (Mile 68.6), and Blackburn Point's 9-foot swing bridge at Mile 63.1.
For a night on the hook, Hudson Bayou (5 feet reported in 1982) and Whitaker Bayou (about 4 feet in 2001) both shelter small craft right off the city. North at the Manatee River the Coast Pilot says it plainly: well protected from all directions, good storm anchorage for small boats, with centerline depth reported at 6.5 feet in 1995 up to Daybeacon 31. At the river mouth the National Park Service designates De Soto Cove a temporary anchorage for small pleasure boats, loud motors and excessive wake prohibited.
The three Gulf passes here share a footnote. Big Sarasota Pass is marked by private daybeacons and changes continually; New Pass buoys are shifted so often to chase best water that they are not charted at all; Longboat Pass has the strongest set of the three — flood 1.8 knots east, ebb 1.6 west — under a 17-foot bascule. Run them on a rising tide in good light, or run outside.
Leg four: Boca Grande Pass and the anchorage everyone comes for
Boca Grande Pass is the deep way in: a 32-foot federal channel from the Gulf, with the Coast Pilot rating the inner end good anchorage in 20 to 40 feet with good holding — a harbor of refuge. It moves water. Entrance currents average 2.2 knots at strength and the ebb occasionally reaches 3 to 4 knots depending on wind. Inside, clock the Boca Grande Causeway swing bridge: 22 feet closed, tender on VHF 9, opening weekdays on the hour and half hour from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., every 15 minutes on weekends and holidays, and on demand after six. The Charlotte Harbor guide has the dockage at both ends of it.
The destination is Pelican Bay, on the northeast side of Cayo Costa — well-protected anchorage in 4 to 7 feet, entered through Pelican Pass at a controlling depth of about 5 feet. Boats drawing under 5 feet also report anchorage outside in 7 to 11 feet between Johnson Shoals and the island's northwest side. Behind the beach, a state park opens daily 8 a.m. to sunset for private vessels, with nine miles of undeveloped shoreline reachable only by boat. All of it lies inside the Gasparilla Sound–Charlotte Harbor Aquatic Preserve — 84,501 acres, established in 1979 — where prop damage to seagrass carries real penalties. Trim up over grass, and run the current FWC manatee zone maps rather than the ones you remember.
If you would rather not stand an anchor watch, Fort Myers Beach runs a municipal mooring field at Matanzas Pass: 89 balls year-round for vessels to 70 feet, VHF 16, weekly pump-out by the town's own vessel, and two public dinghy docks. You can take it by the night or by the month, with a cap on how long you can stay.
The last leg is open water, and it changes the boat
There is no protected waterway between the Caloosahatchee and Naples — the Coast Pilot's Intracoastal coverage begins at the river — so that leg is an open-Gulf passage: weather window, fuel margin, a hull that likes a seaway. Below Naples, the 11-mile inside route to Marco reports a centerline controlling depth of 3.6 feet from a 2000 survey to the Gordon Pass entrance channel junction, then 7.6 feet from a 2006 survey into Naples. Gordon Pass is no-wake between Daybeacons 7 and 10, and again from Daybeacon 29 to the bridge.
Thin bays, one open crossing, days spent at anchor rather than at a dock — that combination picks the boat. An outboard boat with the motors trimmed up floats over most of this coast, which is why the Boston Whaler 330 Outrage and the Pursuit S328 turn up on these sandbars. If the run means six people, a full day at anchor and shade that lasts to sunset, a power catamaran like the Aquila 42 Coupe buys the beam and the deck space without asking for a deep-water slip.
Tony's Take
Everybody plans this coast around the marinas. I plan it around the passes. Get Boca Grande and Longboat right on the tide and the whole run is easy; get them wrong and you'll spend the afternoon apologizing to your crew. My version: leave Clearwater on a Thursday, three days down to Cayo Costa with a night on the hook behind Fort De Soto, and let Naples wait for the next trip — that open-Gulf leg deserves its own weather window. And buy the boat that lets you anchor where the water is two feet deep, not the one that makes you admire it from the channel.
— Tony Smith, Founder — Minted Yachts
Tell us how you'd actually run this coast — which passes, how many nights at anchor, who's coming — and we'll match the boat to it. Email TS@MintedYachts.com or call +1 (404) 805-9819.