Recently I was given the opportunity to crew on a boat from Baltimore, MD to West Palm Beach, FL.  It was the good kind of delivery - it wasn’t work; it was pleasure; and we were out to have fun, enjoy the trip and the experience. On most deliveries I’ve done there is always a great push to get some place for one reason or another. 000000 For this trip, we allowed ourselves plenty of time for leisure (or so we thought).

The original plan was to head out of the Chesapeake, spend three or four days offshore, and then make the run into West Palm. Well, that didn’t quite pan out due to a few weather systems, including Tropical Depression Ida. It took us two days to get to the bottom of the Chesapeake, and at this point we decided we’d stick inside the ICW and head on down to Beaufort, NC before we headed offshore. The forecast showed that in a few day’s time the winds looked much more favorable, and a ride down the ICW didn’t seem so bad….with the exception that the boat had a draft of 7.5 feet and bridge clearance of 65’. The ICW is guaranteed for a draft of 8’ and a bridge clearance of 65’. Needless to say, it wasn’t going to be much breathing room.

On the way into Norfolk we were faced with our first hazard to navigation….The USS Nimitz (a 1,100’ long aircraft carrier) which was barreling down at us with a 1,000 yard “Security Zone” that was being enforced by several helicopters, Coast Guard patrol boats and a few other boats we chose to steer clear of. To avoid the Nimitz and the security zone, we had to go over a shoal that left just 15 feet below our keel. Apparently, this was to of concern to the US Navy.

Once passed all of the shipyards, mothballed ships and various other industrial happenings in the Norfolk area, the channel starts to narrow and you come to Great Bridge Lock, the real beginning of the ICW. I’d done this trip three times before and this trip was just as exciting as the rest. My previous trips had been in powerboats where we cruised at 20+ knots. Now with our maximum speed at 8 knots, I was able to slow down and enjoy the show.

For several hours, we had been discussing how to get the boat to have less air draft. We’d seen pictures on the internet of a boat using several water bags to lean itself over by many degrees to reduce the mast height. Collectively, the crew thought this made sense but to simplify things, we decided to hang a few of us, including myself off of the boom to try and lean the boat over. We had our chance within the first few miles of the ICW to test out our theory…out we went, Rich and I on the end of the boom…we thought we looked sharp doing it, but as it turns out this bridge was higher than 65’, and in the end we likely looked rather foolish to the boats behind us but at least we knew if push came to shove we could gain a few very important inches at the top of the rig if need be. 

So we continued on for the day using our trusty Garmin chart plotter (which hadn’t been updated in three years….and an old ICW cruising guide from 2002….both of these out of date issues ended up being a problem for us down the line.)
 One of the key rules of thumb is that the ICW is not to run at night. Being the old salts that we are (average age on the boat was 29), we decided to continue on past sunset…we were in the zone and making good miles, so what the heck. Sometime around 8pm that night, we decided it would be good to find a place to anchor for the night. It was damp, foggy, and we were all tired from the day’s excitement. There was another sailboat traveling behind us that we had been chatting with on the radio. They knew of a good anchorage just passed the deserted Pungo Ferry Marina and on the other side of the Pungo Ferry Bridge which we knew was going to be a tight squeeze. We followed them under, and yes, it was tight. Our VHF antenna scraped the entire way (as it did on 20 something more bridges during the trip).

As it turns out the charted anchorage has shoaled in and neither of us could make it in. Of course with updated charts and information, we would have known this. I threw out the idea of turning back around and tying up at the old Pungo Ferry Marina, and we did so with great success. The other sailboat soon followed. After helping them tie up, we all became quick friends and celebrated our first day on the ICW with fireworks on the beach provided by Clay, the owner of the other boat. Fireworks on the ICW…who’d have known?!  It was sad to see a dilapidated old Pungo Ferry Marina and restaurant; I’d passed it a few times on previous boat trips, and it was always busy. Now it was deserted. After a bit of time on Google, research showed it closed in January of 2008 due to lack of business on the ICW, or as we came to call it the GFC (Global Financial Crisis).
The rest of the trip was just as much fun. 

The next day brought what we knew would be the biggest challenge of the trip, The Wilkerson Bridge. It’s famous on the ICW for not being 65’ high, which was the specification it was built to. We called a marina on the other side of it that literally laughed at us when we told them of our mast height. That wasn’t the encouragement this group of seasoned sailors needed. So in our true fashion, we went for it, and we went for it at night. We spent the day discussing how we would attack the bridge, or as we now called it, Mission Wilkerson. We theorized that we’d be prepared to hang all sorts of stuff from the end of the boom to lean the boat over and walk the boat through holding onto the wooden bridge abutments, nice and easy. Our judgment got the better of us and we decided against hanging anything or anyone over the side of the boat at night (keep in mind, this bridge is over the ALLIGATOR river). 

We finally had the bridge in our sights. Rich put “The Final Count Down” by  the ever popular 80’s band “Europe” on the Ipod and we all got ready to go. We donned our PFDs and eased up along the big wooden abutments with fenders and lines out and we were ready to walk ourselves under in a controlled fashion.  As controlled as we were, we still managed to remove the masthead light and part of the Windex from the top of the mast, but heck…we made it! High fives all around! Within 20 minutes we had made our anchorage and anchored for the night. Oddly, the anchor light still worked albeit the lens was now with us in the cockpit. That night a full moon rose from behind us as we grilled sausages in the cockpit and swapped war stories.

The next morning we were bound for Beaufort, NC for fuel and supplies before we headed offshore. The day was fairly uneventful. As we left the anchorage, we found ourselves in the front of the pack, I counted nearly 30 sailboats behind us. We all managed to crack out our jibs and motor sail down the same stretch of waterway. It was quite the sight. We reached Beaufort before sunset - the first time we’d tied up before sunset in four days! We had showers and dinner ashore and the next morning we headed for open water. There was a vast difference between open water and the confines of the ICW. It was much more relaxed, and we set sail and took turns at watch. Thirty-six hours later we said farewell to our friend Rich who had a commitment back in Baltimore and dropped him off in Charleston. We literally did a touch and go and waved goodbye, and headed back to open water. Our first night’s sail was beautiful - the wind at our beam and calm seas. Unfortunately, this was our last good night’s sail.  Tropical Depression Ida changed things up for us. The seas and wind continued to build throughout the day and night. My two night watches were done in full foul weather gear as wind and heavy spray came across our beam with gusts to 35 knots. It really wasn’t pleasant, especially for somebody who is used to running powerboats.

The next day brought no break in the action. We finally sailed into Cape Canaveral for some well needed calm waters and found ourselves back on the ICW around eight in the morning. It was pretty interesting to see all of the NASA launch pads, although troubling in some respect as I realized I had been staring at the same structures (except lit up) the night before on both my  8pm-10pm watch and my 2am-4am watch. It would prove to be an interesting day with no less than six fixed bridges before our final destination. As we approached the first bridge, we saw a boat similar in our size anchored outside of it. Our hearts sank. If we couldn’t make it under this bridge we’d be stuck in Cape Canaveral for several days to wait out weather. We called the boat that was anchored outside the bridge, and he confirmed that his mast clearance was 64’ and the bridge read 63’ of clearance. Devastation began to set in amongst our small crew.  He said several boats his size had already turned around that day and suggested we do the same…frankly we didn’t like his attitude! We had come this far and we weren’t giving up. We sent Andrea up the mast to remove the masthead unit (which we removed at the beginning of the ICW and reinstalled in Beaufort) and decided to press on. I, for one, was a skeptic as the clearance said 63’. We made it under a 64’ bridge - so heck, why not give it a shot. The guy anchored nearby bid us good luck on the VHF, and we slowly eased the mast up to the main span and drifted under. The VHF antenna bent back and we cleared! The guy at anchor was astonished and claimed we were the first boat that tall to go through in days!

We motored down the ICW all day and long into the night, reaching our destination in West Palm Beach at 3:30am on Monday, November 9 - ten days after departing Baltimore. Here are some of the things we learned on our trip down the ICW that I feel you may find handy if planning the same trip:

Before you depart on a trip into unfamiliar waters, have a local electronics shop update your chart plotter software. We found a few spots along the trip that varied wildly from the plotter. Everyone you talk with claims they don’t rely on their plotter as their number one navigation source…but be realistic!

1. Bring along the latest charts and Waterway Guides. Our outdated charts had the same information that was on our outdated GPS charts…a dangerous combo.  Fortunately our eyes opened up to this fact when a boat called us on the VHF to alert us to the fact that the channel had recently changed and we should follow him to keep from going aground. Thank you, sir!  Parts of the ICW can be very deceiving as they can be as wide as Penobscot Bay, but only have three feet of water outside the channel. There is a clear reason they call the ICW “The Ditch.”
2. They say you can’t run the ICW at night. Yes, you can. Some sections are clearly a bit sketchier than others, but as long as you are prudent and pay attention, we found it very doable, fun and challenging.
3. Make sure you have an extra spot light. Our’s quit during the last six hours of the trip. It sure would have been handy…and it would have prevented a few minor groundings on an otherwise uneventful trip. It’s very easy to miss a mark in the ICW at night.
4. Purchase a “laser tape measure” from your local hardware store. If you’ve got some questionable bridge heights, put a crew member up on the bow to shoot the distance from the bow up to the bridge-- if you know your maximum height above deck you should be able to do some quick math to figure out if you’ll make it or not. It became obvious to us that the height boards on bridges do not tell the truth.
5. If you have a friend with a night vision scope, borrow it. We had one on board that we borrowed, and it turned difficult decisions into easy ones.
6. Follow your gut. During this trip our gut feelings always seemed to win.  If we turned around and didn’t try to go under bridges when people said it was impossible, I’d still be on vacation right now.
7. As it turns out the Internet is a wealth of information. The Waterway Guide has an online version that has all sorts of updates of daily happenings on the ICW. In retrospect, I wish we did some reporting of our own to let people know the true bridge clearances as that seems to be a large stress point for most people.
8. If you plan on motoring a lot on the ICW and you’ve got a single diesel, make sure your fuel filtration system is up to the task. If you lose your engine in some parts of the ICW, you’ll be in trouble in no time.
9. Be a good ICW Samaritan. If you see somebody doing something weird or being erratic, give them a hail on the VHF. You could save somebody from danger, and trust me - they will be grateful.
10. Don’t always follow the leader…. depending upon the speed at which your boat travels, you will tend to get stuck with the same boats for the day. You may think you have it easy as you play “follow the leader” with the guy in front of you—until he misses a mark and leads you into the mud, too.
11. Be nice to the bridge tenders. During our final hours coming into West Palm Beach, we had three bridges - all of which opened on different schedules. Due to an incident where our draft exceeded the depth, we missed a bridge opening by just a few minutes which will screw up the rest of the openings. The bridge tender was kind enough to open specially for us because he knew from our conversation with the last bridge tender we’d already had a long night, so he offered to do us a favor, and the last bridge tender did the same thing for us.

Those are some of the many things I’ve learned, or relearned during this past trip. A lot of those things are basic to good Seamanship, but the ICW seems a bit different than a romp around in the bay. It has its own culture.

From my experiences talking to people who have done this trip several times, there seems to be a negative feeling about the ICW and how difficult and challenging it can be. But isn’t that the point? The ICW is a great piece of Americana. It’s the liquid version of Route 66, with quirky little stops along the way. In fact, it’s a piece of American History- the entire thing was Thomas Jefferson’s idea!   Much of what is known as the Dismal Swamp Route was built upon George Washington’s property; you can’t get closer to history than that.

Are you thinking about taking your boat down the ICW? Let me know, I’ll be happy to go as crew!

-Ben