Saturday morning, before the sun cleared the tree line at 603 Anchorage Drive, trucks with trailers were already backed up toward the boat ramp. By 6 a.m. on August 8, lines were in the water for the Anchorage Aweigh Fishing Tournament, the North Palm Beach Recreation Department's annual contest for inshore trout, sheepshead and snapper, and offshore king, dolphin, wahoo, mutton snapper and grouper. Weigh-in ran at the Anchorage Park Marina from noon to 3 p.m. By 5, the cookout and awards ceremony had taken over the picnic area, and by then most of the anglers had already told their version of the one that got away twice.
The village calls this the 19th annual running of the tournament. It is actually the 20th year, since one year was canceled during the pandemic and the numbering never caught up. Nobody at the weigh-in table seemed bothered by the discrepancy. Two decades of a recreational fishing tournament is the kind of continuity that outlasts most of the storefronts along US Highway 1, and the gap in the official count says less about the event than about how quietly it has just kept happening.
A Schedule Built Around the Tide, Not the Clock
The tournament's structure tells you something about who it's actually for. The adult competition runs the full day. The Kids Fishing Derby is boxed into a single hour in the middle of the afternoon, deliberately timed so families don't have to choose between the two.
| Time | What's Happening |
|---|---|
| 6:00 a.m. | Lines in the water, tournament begins |
| 12:00–3:00 p.m. | Weigh-in at Anchorage Park Marina |
| 1:45 p.m. | Kids gather at the Anchorage Park Gazebo |
| 2:00–3:00 p.m. | Kids Fishing Derby, catch and release |
| 5:00 p.m. | Cookout, awards, entertainment |
No pre-registration is required for the derby, and bait is provided if a kid shows up without any. Awards go to the largest catch in two age brackets, 8 and under and 9 to 15. It's the kind of low-friction event that only works because the park it's happening in was built to hold both a serious fishing contest and a birthday-party-scale kids' activity on the same afternoon without either one crowding out the other.
The Park Behind the Boats
Anchorage Park itself covers 20.65 acres, and the amenity list reads like two different parks stapled together. On one side: four lighted sand volleyball courts, a children's playground and tot lot, two tennis courts, two youth baseball fields, and off-leash dog areas split by size, one for dogs over 25 pounds and one for dogs under. On the other side: two fishing docks, a boat launch, dry boat storage, and wet slips at the Anchorage Park Marina where the tournament's boats came in to weigh their catch.
That second half is what separates Anchorage Park from a typical municipal green space. Most village parks have a playground and maybe a dog run. Anchorage Park has those, plus the working boater infrastructure a village of North Palm Beach's size doesn't usually maintain at public expense. It's the reason a fishing tournament with two decades of history can run entirely on village-owned water and village-owned dock space, rather than needing a private marina to host it.
Two Rulebooks Under One Gazebo
Here's what's easy to miss on a Saturday when the park is full of families and out-of-town anglers: not everything at Anchorage Park operates by the same rules.
The events are open to anyone. The tournament doesn't ask where you live. The Kids Fishing Derby doesn't check IDs. Even the large picnic gazebo, the same one where derby kids gathered at 1:45, can be reserved by anyone, resident or not, though residents pay a lower rate.
Twenty years of a fishing tournament has outlasted most of the businesses that have opened and closed along the same stretch of Highway 1.
The infrastructure is a different story. The waitlist for boat and trailer storage at Anchorage Park is only open to North Palm Beach residents, full stop. To launch from the boat ramp, you need a decal, and to get the decal you need a driver's license and vehicle registration that both show a North Palm Beach address. Volleyball court rentals run $25 an hour for residents with proof of residency required. Sport programs typically carry two price tiers, with the non-resident rate running about $10 higher, while ongoing fitness classes and bus trips charge everyone the same regardless of address.
So the park has a public face and a resident-only substructure sitting inside the same 20.65 acres. Anyone can show up for the fishing tournament or the Kids Derby. Getting a spot in the dry storage lot, or a decal for the ramp, means you actually live here.
Where the Water Goes When It Leaves the Park
Anchorage Park's marina isn't the only water infrastructure in this stretch of the village, and the businesses around it follow a more familiar set of rules: pay for access, no residency required.
A short distance north, Safe Harbor Old Port Cove sits on a 60-acre peninsula at 116 Lakeshore Drive, with roughly 200 slips accommodating boats from day cruisers to superyachts up to 200 feet. Its private channel meets the Intracoastal at Coast Guard Channel Marker 27, four miles north of the Lake Worth Inlet, with no drawbridges in between, a detail that matters more to a boater timing a run to the inlet than it might to anyone reading this on land. The marina recently added Belle's Café on-site, giving boaters a reason to step off the dock without leaving the property.
Just south on US Highway 1, Frigate's Waterfront Bar & Grill runs a tiki bar and dining room built for arrival by boat as much as by car, with over 500 feet of dock space available first come, first served. Weekday happy hour runs 3 to 6:30 p.m., live music takes over Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday mornings bring a tropical brunch buffet from 9 to 1:30.
Between the park's free boat ramp, Old Port Cove's members-and-guests marina, and Frigate's pay-to-dock happy hour, North Palm Beach offers three different price points for getting a boat to shore within about a mile of each other. Which one you use has less to do with where you live than with what you're willing to pay for the experience of tying up.
The Rest of the Calendar
The tournament is the headline event, but Anchorage Park runs smaller programming most weeks that rarely makes it past the village newsletter. The library brings its outdoor children's programming here too, from a Storytime and Craft session at the park on July 25 to a Music and Movement morning earlier this year, with librarians Ms. Carly and Ms. Liz leading songs and dancing for anyone willing to bring a toddler and a blanket. Dog Days of Summer brought out the off-leash regulars on July 27 for an early morning meetup before the heat set in. Pickleball and basketball open gym sessions run through the Community Center on Prosperity Farms Road, a short drive from the park itself.
Once a year, the village's Heritage Festival closes out with a parade that starts at Village Hall on US Highway 1, moves north on Eastwind Drive, west on Lighthouse Drive, and south on Anchorage Drive before ending back at the park for a business expo, carnival rides and live entertainment that runs into the evening. It's the one event on the calendar that treats the park not as a launch point for boats but as a finish line for the whole village.
None of this changes what Anchorage Park is on paper: a 20.65-acre public park with a marina attached. What the residency rules reveal is how the village has drawn a line between hospitality and infrastructure. The events stay open because that's what builds a 20-year tradition worth showing up for. The storage lot and the boat ramp stay gated because somebody has to actually maintain them, and the village has decided that job belongs to the people who live here year-round.
That's the version of North Palm Beach that doesn't show up in a drive-by. It's the one you notice only after you've tried to get on the storage waitlist, or shown up for the third Saturday in a row to fish off the same dock.
For those thinking through what life on the water actually looks like day to day in North Palm Beach, or comparing it to other pockets of the Palm Beach corridor, Elizabeth DeWoody brings the same close attention to the neighborhoods themselves that goes into every transaction. Work With Elizabeth to talk through what a specific address, dock, or stretch of the Intracoastal actually offers before you decide where to plant your flag.
