A traveler's guide to Madeira Beach.

When to visit Madeira Beach

Madeira Beach runs on the standard gulf-coast clock. Late spring and autumn are the easy seasons, and spring is the reliable stretch. Summer is high season for the charter boats out of the pass, and in autumn the fishing arguably improves. Autumn also carries hurricane season's standing terms, flexibility and a watched forecast.

• Spring, March through May, is dry, warm and busy, but never Clearwater-busy, as the water climbs back toward swimmable.
• Summer is hot and rhythmic, with a storm most afternoons and a warm sea to show for it.
• Autumn is the local's answer, with the water warm into October and the crowds gone in September.
• Winter is mild, bright and quiet, better for walking the tideline than swimming it.

Getting to Madeira Beach

Madeira Beach is strung on Gulf Boulevard, the one road that runs the whole Pinellas barrier chain. Arriving by road is simple, but leaving in season asks patience. Two airports serve the island, and both routes end on Gulf Boulevard.

• St Pete Clearwater airport is about twenty five minutes away.
• Tampa International is about forty five minutes away, traffic permitting.

The better arrival is by water. This town has always been easier to reach by boat than by bridge, and it still shows.

• The pass is a marked channel straight off the gulf.
• The bay side is all docks.
• A house with its own tie-up turns the whole coast into your front yard.

John's Pass and the working coast

John's Pass is the inlet between Madeira Beach and Treasure Island. A hurricane opened the channel in 1848, and the island has organized itself around the cut ever since. Today it is the working heart of the coast, a tourist attraction that has not stopped being a real place.

Go in the late afternoon and watch the boats unload. Buy what they landed, and eat it a hundred yards from where it came ashore. The pelicans on the pilings have seen it all before and expect a cut.

• The boardwalk village stands on pilings.
• The fleet goes out for grouper and comes back followed by pelicans.
• The tide runs hard through the channel.
• Dolphins station themselves in the channel and let the current feed them.

The beach and the sunset

Away from the pass, Madeira Beach is about two and a half miles of broad, pale sand facing due west. Low buildings back it, with beach accesses every few blocks. It has the same quartz sand and gentle gulf as Clearwater, with a fraction of the foot traffic.

Because the beach faces west, the evening is the main event. The town gathers loosely at the accesses around sunset, the way other towns gather for a market. It disperses to dinner when the color finishes, and by nine the beach belongs to the ghost crabs.

Where to stay in Madeira Beach

Nothing on the island is far from the sand. The evening walk to the water takes minutes from any block, so the choice is about noise, boats and the sunset. The coast's one concentration of noise sits at John's Pass and fades within a few blocks.

• Blocks near the pass put the boardwalk, the boats and dinner within a walk.
• The blocks north toward the Redingtons grow quiet fast and stay that way.
• The bay side trades the sunset for a dock and calmer water, better for rods or a boat.