Lessons in Florida

Two coasts, one enormous web of inland waterways: Florida is the country's boating heavyweight for a reason. The Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico bracket the state, and between them run rivers, bays, and passes that hold nearly every kind of water a boater could want: the glassy urban marinas of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, the island-scattered flats of the Florida Keys, the slow, historic St. Johns River. You can spend a morning gunkholing behind a barrier island and the afternoon trolling blue water offshore, and the state's dense network of marinas and charter operations makes both easy to arrange.

The Gulf side runs calm and often shallow: good water for slow cruising, anchoring off barrier islands like Sanibel or Siesta Key, and working the big bay systems around Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay. Up in the Panhandle, Destin and Panama City Beach pair white-sand beaches with emerald water and busy charter docks. Over on the Atlantic side, the Intracoastal Waterway threads a protected line for hundreds of miles, stitching port cities to small coastal towns, with marinas along the whole route handling transient and long-term dockage for every class of vessel.