A Week Away With Friends at Peanut Island

A few weeks ago, once we were certain that Bella was on the mend following her surgery, we decided that we needed a change of scenery. We headed down to West Palm Beach in search of some fun in the sun and some clear blue water!

A guy having fun on the ICW on our way to West Palm Beach!

For the first few days, we anchored right downtown West Palm Beach. There are 2 long free city docks to dinghy to and a decent sized anchorage across the ICW from them.

As we were driving around looking for a place to drop the hook, a woman on a nearby sailboat ran up to the deck and started waving really big at us, as if she knew us. A little perplexed at first, we finally realized that this was a couple we had met 2 years ago in Marathon named Leigh and Austin and we just randomly cruised right by them!  We had met them just before they headed out to the Bahamas a couple of years back and had gone out to dinner with them the night before they left. Dustin and I had literally just been talking about them earlier that day saying how we wish we would’ve had more time to get to know them and wondered what they were up to now and then, BOOM! There they are!  How ironic! 

We all met up the next night and walked into town for dinner at Rocco’s Tacos. Leigh and Austin are both super easy to talk to and we had the best time hanging out with them again! They are close to our age and don’t have kids, both still work remotely like we do, and we all just have a lot in common. It was so nice to be around like-minded people and we had so much fun!  Unfortunately for us, we ran into them just as they were getting ready to cross over to the Bahamas again. It’s like history was repeating itself! LOL.

The next day, we all moved over to the anchorage near Peanut Island in Riviera Beach. Dustin and I were positioning ourselves for a fun weekend with some friends who were arriving the next day to join us, and Leigh and Austin were getting set up for their crossing to the Bahamas. We had them over for dinner and drinks to say goodbye and then around 9pm, we watched in pure envy and waved goodbye as they headed out into the ocean to cross to the Bahamas. 

Bella is allergic to the rabies vaccine and cannot leave the country because of it (which is so unfair!) and so we’ve been watching friends cross out to the Bahamas for 3 years now. It’s beyond frustrating because that was our original plan – to go to the Bahamas and the Caribbean, but we are nonetheless grateful for every single day longer that we get to spend with our adorable little dog that brings us so much joy!

After Leigh and Austin’s boat disappeared into the starry night, we got our spotlight out and started shining it in the water to see what we could find around our boat. The water was about 12 feet deep, and we could see straight to the bottom! This beautiful clear water was exactly what we’d been missing all season this year, and it was so nice to be able to see it again!  Peanut Island is located just off from the inlet to the ocean, so when the tide comes in, the color of the water is just incredible! There wasn’t a whole lot of wildlife that night under our boat, but we did see a starfish!

A starfish on the bottom of the ocean

The next morning, Dustin and I took advantage of slack tide and inflated our paddleboards for a quick paddle around while the current wasn’t so strong!

After awhile, our friends, Mike and Aubrey, joined us on the boat for the weekend! 

We picked them up at Phil Foster Park and then dinghied them out to the boat at Peanut Island.

A huge starfish!!

There’s a really nice paved walking trail around the island, a beach with a lifeguard and protected snorkeling area, and areas to kayak and paddleboard.

Mike ended up slicing his toe open on a barnacle while we were walking, so we had to head back to the boat to get him patched up. The rock he had been standing on looked like a murder scene!

On the way back, we spotted a girl selling pineapples and coconuts from her boat on the beach. We stopped and each bought one and enjoyed some fresh coconut water and took the leftovers back to the boat for fresh pina coladas! There was also a pontoon boat driving around selling pizzas! How fun!

Once we made it around the other side of the island, we ran into our friends Bob and Kat who were also in the area on their boat, and chatted for a bit and then headed back to Trouvaille for lunch.  Bob and Kat joined us all for some pia coladas, and then once they headed back to their boat, Dustin and I and Mike and Aubrey decided it would be fun to do some synchronized jumping off the bow of the boat!  The current was quite swift since the tide was going out. When we jumped, by time we came back up to the surface, we had already been swept back under our boat and it made it really easy to keep jumping, float back to the ladder, then get out and jump again. It was so fun just feeling like a kid again that day!

That night, we dinghied up to Sailfish Marina and had dinner at the restaurant there.  

Overall, the weekend was a ton of fun and Peanut Island definitely lived up to the hype!