With more than 400 miles of navigable canals, Cape Coral holds the title of the city with the most canals in the world. Its aquatic landscape draws in new residents with waterfront living and the ability to launch a boat right from their backyard.
But residents say getting from those canals to open water is not as simple — or as fast — as advertised.
“From here to get Gulf access, which is the Matlacha Bridge, it’s about an hour,” said Gordy Littler, a resident of North Cape Coral. “A lot of the real estate people were telling you it was 30 minutes. And when you maintain the wake you’re supposed to, it’s an hour.”
And some boaters say it's not getting any quicker.
“With the amount of boat traffic, it's been getting a little bit longer each year,” said Todd Anderson, another North Cape Coral resident.
The city recently completed a new boat launch near Crystal Lake in the Northwest Cape — a step intended to improve access, but some boaters say it's not enough.
“What you really would like to see is this launch giving more direct access out to Charlotte Harbor, which is just on the other side of the mangroves that we have here,” said Raymond Mulé, president of the North Cape Boaters Alliance.
Mulé is proposing a plan to the City Council to cut travel times by creating or modifying an opening through the mangrove-lined shoreline, specifically through a spot known as Breach 1A off Jacaranda Parkway or via a new cut through the Charlotte Harbor Preserve State Park near the new Crystal Lake launch.
“Through some form of an opening, whether it’s an existing opening we might be able to modify, such as Breach 1A, or some kind of new opening,” Mulé explained. “We’ve started to speak with council and email them with our request to start a design plan and study.”
Mulé acknowledges the concerns such a project would raise.
“There’s been a lot of complications with outside forces who want to stop anything that has anything to do with waterways,” he said. “But just as we maintain roads, just as we rehabilitate roads, there have to be methods to do that with new canals as well.”
Cape Coral city officials say there are no plans to pursue a project like this at this time.
In a statement, a city spokesperson wrote:
"At this time, the City does not have any plans to pursue the creation of a man-made navigable channel from the South Spreader Canal to Matlacha Pass. Such an undertaking would require a project budget, extensive planning and review and permitting by both the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), among other agencies. The complexity of permitting, along with an analysis of potential environmental impacts, makes this a particularly challenging project that would take several years to complete."
Despite this, Mulé isn’t backing down. “It’s time that the city starts to consider the needs of this area of Cape Coral,” he said.
DOWNLOAD
the free
Gulf Coast News app
for your latest news and alerts on breaking news, weather, sports, entertainment and more.