Hull Cleaning, Dock & Seawall Divers in North Palm Beach, FL

The Earman River (C-17) collects several canals and brings fresh water into the Lake Worth Lagoon, and it has a saltwater intrusion dam (S-44) about 4,100 feet west of where it meets the North Palm Beach Waterway, the man-made channel that joins Lake Worth Creek and the Intracoastal to the C-17. That means the village's canals mix fresh and salt water, and the mix changes with the canal's releases. The North Palm Beach Waterway and the C-17 are year-round manatee slow-speed zones, Little Lake Worth has a 50-foot shoreline slow zone, and the lagoon from the A1A bridge to the Blue Heron bridge has a 300-foot one.

Mixed water grows a mixed crop: slime and waterline algae where it is fresher, hard barnacles on the props, shafts and rudders everywhere, because bottom paint can't stick to metal, and zinc wear that changes canal by canal. We clean every 30 days and record each anode's percentage.

Safe Harbor Old Port Cove has held 250-plus boats from 20 to 200 feet since 1973, with a private channel that starts at Intracoastal marker 27, 4 miles north of the Lake Worth Inlet, and it is the biggest single stop on our village route; Old Port Cove itself is a gated condo and marina community on a 60-acre peninsula. Anchorage Park Marina on Anchorage Drive has a resident-decal ramp, wet and dry storage with a waitlist, two day docks and a kayak launch. The rest is private canal docks in ZIP 33408, including the island around the North Palm Beach Country Club, reached by the Lighthouse Drive, Earman River and Parker drawbridge crossings.

Canal docks here sit in slow, mixed water where oysters coat a piling from the mud up, and shipworms work on wood and concrete alike; we clean them without pickaxes or chisels and inspect them bare. We have not found a village seawall ordinance, so a seawall inspection here is about the wall's condition and the lender-required documentation a sale needs: $250 for a home, $350 for an Old Port Cove building, cleaned first, with cracks filled all the way through with custom cement tubes.

Call 561-666-3716 or use the form with the boat's length, whether it is at Old Port Cove, Anchorage Park or a canal dock (say which canal), and whether the hull is painted. Old Port Cove is gated, so the divers call ahead and a text goes out right before the visit. You don't have to be there, and the report and photos arrive after each dive.