PALM BEACH, FL

PALM BEACH, FL

JUNE 8-12, 2017

Palm Beach is an area of extremes: the very wealthy and very poor; champagne flowing on the Atlantic side and cocaine in the projects.  Just outside the Port of Palm Beach it isn’t safe to walk around at night; prostitution and drugs are rampant.  Outside of these economically impoverished areas, it’s a beautiful area with lots of attractions, great seafood and water sports.  The mega yachts grace the marinas.  This is one of the centers of American wealth.

In 1927 cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post commissioned a 128 room mansion, on 20 acres of Atlantic Beach front, with  65,000 sq. ft of living area.  She named it Mar-a-Lago. To grace the mansion, in 1931,  a 360 ft three masted tall ship was built and named Sea Cloud.  She, too, was lavishly furnished.  A special permit and dredging were required to anchor her in the protected waters off the Intracoastal Waterway.  Presently, she is being chartered as a luxury cruise yacht.  Donald Trump bought the mansion in 1985 and has turned it into a private club he now calls The Winter White House.

Peanut Island is just off the stbd. side of a vessel entering Lake Worth from sea.  It has about 79 acres that came from dredging projects throughout the years.  Today it is called Peanut Island Park and has some camp sites, docks for a few yachts, a restaurant and museum and areas where one can swim and snorkel.  The island also features a Bomb Shelter that was built, in secret, in 1961 for President John F. Kennedy.  He often spent the winters in nearby Palm Beach Florida where the Kennedy Family had a mansion not too far from Mar-a-Lago.

We took our granddaughter over there in our dinghy and toured the island, visited the Bomb Shelter and the former USCG residence and repair facility.  The future of Peanut island is uncertain since the lease for the museum and USCG residence are not being renewed by the lessees.  It is an interesting place and nice getaway for the locals.  One hopes that real estate moguls, like Trump, are not able to buy it from the City of Palm Beach and turn it into more condominiums or mansions.

We didn’t visit anything else in the area so we heaved up anchor at 0700 hrs on June 12^th and headed out to sea for Cape Canaveral about 50 nm distant.