Props to the British engineer F. W. Lanchester for inventing the powerboat more than a century ago. To be precise, he was the first to connect a screw propeller to a gasoline engine and mount it on a recreational vessel. Lanchester was part of the late-nineteenth-century development of motorboating for pleasure—a pursuit long since perfected by affluent Floridians. Many of these weekend seafarers, as it happens, also play golf. And so, in selecting a proper residence, they navigate toward planned communities with excellent courses plus a shipshape deepwater marina. The sinuous presence of the Intracoastal Waterway along Florida’s coast helps this golfer-yachtsman combination flourish. —David Gould
Harbour Ridge Yacht & Country Club
Palm City, Florida
The St. Lucie River and the connecting Intracoastal Waterway can carry a seacraft to the Atlantic or, via the Okeechobee Waterway, to the gulf. Harbour Ridge members know the route well, having followed it in search of snook, trout and redfish—often as part of their organized fishing derbies. Golf here combines traditional Florida (Joe Lee’s Golden Marsh course) with Pete Dye’s British-inflected contours. Covering almost nine hundred acres and laid out with fewer than seven hundred residences (condos, patio homes and estates), this riverfront enclave maintains its open spaces yet found room for a new 45,000-square-foot clubhouse—after all, you can’t spend your whole life on a boat or a golf course. Visit hrycc.org.
One of South Florida’s finer tie-ups for that Hargrave Capri you’re cruising in is Jonathan’s Landing, named for a Quaker who ran aground here in 1696. True to its namesake, the community is populated by down-to-earth Northeasterners. The golf amenity consists of a Tom and George Fazio course on the property plus a Tom Fazio course and an Arthur Hills course twelve miles inland. Yacht clubbers form flotillas then cruise to the Bahamas or into the gulf. Housing options include single-family homes, town houses and condominiums, set among lagoons, channels, waterways and whatever else floats your boat. Visit jonathanslanding.com.
The Judge Smails in all of us would be tickled to reside at Admirals Cove, where members swap deck shoes for golf spikes every afternoon. The painterly eye of Robert von Hagge is responsible for the golf—all forty-five palm-studded holes of it. The club’s marina can dock ten mega-yachts, but most boats range in size from fifty to seventy feet. With its configuration and surrounding land features, this marina is a superior "hurricane hole," say its harbormasters. Residences range from smaller waterfront condos (there’s a hotel on the property for spillover guests) to stunning mansions that sell for upward of $9 million. Visit admiralscove.net.