Hillsboro Inlet versus Port Everglades

Hillsboro Inlet is not Port Everglades with a nicer name. It is a shorter, meaner, shoaling inlet that Coral Ridge and the north ICW actually use when they do not want 17th Street. Sportfish like it on a good day. Displacement motoryachts from Harbor Beach have no business pretending it is their local mouth. Our canal graph ends at Oakland Park; this URL exists so the north ocean question has a named answer.

Typical: shifting sand, a jettied cut, local knowledge on the bar, and a draft conversation that Port Everglades does not ask. Controlling depth on the bar changes after a blow — we do not print a fake sounding. Commercial traffic is not the PE cruise-ship circus; weekend small-craft traffic is. Related: Coral Ridge fingers at 5.5 ft (the backyard still kills you before the inlet does), Commercial Boulevard at ~15 ft if you came the ICW, Oakland Park at ~25 ft. Approximate planning notes, not a chart. Insurance desks that write “Fort Lauderdale inlet” sometimes mean this one by accident. Ask which mouth.