Starck’s Wheel Ditch gets slow-speed zone after years of safety concerns

A narrow Islamorada shortcut that had worried boaters for years is now marked as a slow-speed, minimum-wake zone, turning a long-running safety fight in Starck’s Wheel Ditch into a formal rule.

New buoys were installed April 9 in the channel, which is less than 100 feet wide and sits off Lower Matecumbe. The Village of Islamorada, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission helped with the work, while TowBoatUS Islamorada, operating as Poseidon Marine Towing and Salvage, handled the buoy installation itself. A marine deputy also was on scene, talking with boaters as they passed through.

Village environmental resources manager Peter Frezza said the nearshore advisory committee had been discussing the problem for at least three years before recommending the slow-speed, minimum-wake zone. The village ordinance says Starck’s Wheel Ditch had already produced dangerous navigational hazards and that the village had received complaints about unsafe boating there. An Islamorada community document describes the ditch as a high-traffic channel adjacent to Lower Matecumbe Key and says it has been the site of many boating accidents over the years, including one fatality. Another accident happened about a month after the council moved forward with the zone, underscoring how quickly the danger could repeat.

The change did not happen overnight. A June 10 council action authorized hiring engineering firm WSP to help with design and permitting for the zone, and council records later showed a second-reading ordinance in March 2026 to amend the village waterways code. Those steps turned the issue from a complaint pattern into a regulatory response, with the village documenting that faster speeds in Starck’s Wheel Ditch would continue to create dangerous hazards.

Under Florida law, slow speed means a vessel is fully off plane and completely settled into the water. A boat is not in compliance if it is still on plane, coming off plane, getting on plane or throwing excessive hazardous wake. In a tight corridor like Starck’s Wheel Ditch, that matters not only for erosion and dock damage, but for the daily shuffle of recreational boaters, guides and waterfront residents trying to move safely through one of Islamorada’s most constrained waterways.