Today we are going to look at those waterfront houses in behind Waterway Cafe in what is called Pirate’s Cove.

Pirate’s Cove has waterfront homes on streets such as East and West Teach, Avery & Canal roads. This is unincorporated Palm Beach County but has a Palm Beach Gardens mailing address.

Canals shown on the Plat are for the benefit of all lot owners for all lawful recreational purposes. This is decent verbiage BUT I remember that a few years ago someone had anchored a boat in the lake. Not sure if that was a homeowner who could probably make a case for the right to do this.

VERY interesting that the waterfront lots on Canal Rd are NOT shown on this Plat which may be why some, but not all of them, have carved land out of their uplands and over flowed it for a dock but they do not appear to have a right to come and go over the canal as they are not a lot owner in the subdivision. But the Florida Board of Trustees Land Document System web site shows the State as the owner of the lands below the water in these canals EXCEPT the one that goes along the Waterway Cafe lot. Thus, the public has the right to say moor a boat in that lake and the uplands abutters, including those on Canal Rd, have the right to wharf out to the navigable water to a distance of 1/4 of the canal width. And this accounts for why Waterway Cafe does not have boats ties up along the canal that abuts them.

OK, so I’m not sure how many people will read this post but about a month ago I did a blog posting on the Effects of the King Tides on Palm Beach Real Estate. When I wrote this post I could see that the actual recorded water level at high tides at the Lake Worth Pier was over one foot HIGHER than what NOAA predicted. WHY? This is one of the main tide gauges used by NOAA to record tide data. Other tide data in the area at places like the the PGA Bridge or even the Port of Palm Beach is based upon the Lake Worth Pier data with a numerical modifier applied. How could they be off by over a full foot?

I just found the answer in THIS ARTICLE which quotes a Brian McNoldy, senior research associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Research, who notes that: “NOAA’s forecasts on king tides rarely line up with the actual measured high tides. The most recent king tide came in 16 inches higher than NOAA predicted it would. The reasons are a combination of warmer waters at this time of the year, however the The last two king tides also coincided with tropical systems that, although far away from Florida’s coast, played a role in the height of the tides. Hurricane Lorenzo, which became a powerful Category 5 storm thousands of miles away, was roaring through the ocean at the start of the month. For the recent king tide, Subtropical Storm Melissa stomped around New England.”

Even more fascinating as noted in this article is that water has “backed up” in the Gulf of Mexico.