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September 2009

Traveling the ICW - Eastern

 

 
The ICW Voyage

There are three great voyages boat owners want to take - The Great Loop, The St. Lawrence Loop, and the ICW.  It's too late this year to do the Great Loop or its companion.  It's a great time to start planning for a trip down the ICW to South Carolina, Georgia, or Florida for the winter.  This may be the best year to come south for many years to come.  Here's why.

Fuel prices will never be lower.  The rough average for diesel fuel is $2.50 per gallon and for gasoline $3.00.  Fuel prices will begin to rise (as they always do) late next spring.  Fuel prices will continue to climb as the economy improves, but will not approach the $4 to $5 levels of 2007.  There is a national election next year and no politician will allow fuel prices and speculation get so out of control in an election year.

Marina prices will not be lower in the near future.  Most marinas are willing to negotiate very favorable rates with boaters these days.  Occupancy rates are terrible, especially in the transient areas.  The Club has some good prices with marinas, although you can probably get a better price directly.  As some poorly capitalized marinas fail in the next couple of years, occupancy rates will go up and, with that, so will rates.  Patsy and I are paying about half of what we first paid in Florida and friends still think that we should move to a cheaper marina nearby.

Travel home is a bargain.  No one stays in Florida the entire season.  Kids, the house, grandkids, and so on all make one go home.  Air fare from Florida to almost anywhere it incredibly cheap.  We usually fly from Palm Beach to Philadelphia or Baltimore, rarely paying more than $69 one way.  While we used to have to make reservations two or more weeks ahead, we can usually get great airfares in the same week.  This will not be true during the holiday periods - Thanksgiving and Christmas time - but you can usually work around that.  Something that you might consider is bringing a car down with you on the first trip home so you can drive home for the holidays if your family is too selfish to come to your winter home for the holidays for just one year.  After all you've done for them.

That covers most of the why-now.  The trip itself is an incredible adventure.  I've always started south from the Chesapeake Bay.  Some cruisers think that the trip down the Chesapeake is the most challenging part of the trip.  The Chesapeake can be interesting in marginal weather - I've been fog-bound for days and sat out an off-shore hurricane once - but usually the fall is easy going.  There are two other areas that need to be mentioned - the Albemarle Sound and the Cape Fear River.  The Albemarle is 50 miles wide and 8 feet deep.  Okay, it's a little deeper than that, but the net effect is the same.  A strong (anything over 15 knots) makes the Albemarle very rough.  One is encouraged to go early in the morning before the winds pick up.  Coinjock or Elizabeth City are nice places to spend the night before an early morning crossing.  The Cape Fear River is hard to describe.  You enter the Cape Fear River through a shallow cut that dumps you into several different possible courses.  It's fairly open, so the weather can be a challenge.  There is a lot of traffic from state run ferries, cargo ships and barges, naval vessels, and pleasure craft.

There are other challenging areas, too.  I avoid Charleston, SC because the boating laws are not enforced.  You'll hear horror stories about boats being damaged at the main docks on the Ashley River by charter boats flying out to catch a fish.  The current is a major challenge.  Most boaters who have stopped at Charleston have a story to tell.  If you must stop in Charleston, I recommend the Cooper River Marina, a county operated facility with a shuttle.  You'll use a taxi to get back at night.  It's out of the way, but it is much safer.  I avoid Bellhaven, NC like the plague that it is.  I do enjoy visiting with Mary at Dowry Creek Marina which is nearby.  There are skinny waters at different places and a couple of places where the charts and the GPS are wrong.  It still worries me to cruise over islands clearly marked on the GPS chart and 9 feet of water under the keel.  Skinny water never bothers me in Georgia.  The 8 feet tides mean that shallow water now probably means deeper water in a few hours.  Shooting across the St. John's River at Mayport is interesting.

What makes the trip worthwhile?  Well, the beauty is simply overwhelming.  You'll run into the first in-shore dolphins swimming with you just north of Beaufort, NC.  Stop at Beaufort City Docks and walk around a pretty little sea city.  Drop into Handscapes Gallery and meet one of my high school friends, Alison Brooks.  She has three stores in the area.  Beaufort is a nice place to provision, too, because the city docks have loaner cars - Buick station wagons and good shopping nearby.  Wrightsville Beach is a beautiful place.  Good restaurants, friendly people, great shopping.  Myrtle Beach is the only place on the ICW where you can dock at an outlet mall that features a Ron Jon Store.  We eat at Maggie Moo's ice cream palace.  From Myrtle Beach to Georgetown is my favorite part of the trip.  This is the Waccamaw River, a gently curving journey through yesterday's forest.  You can stop over at Georgetown, an ancient rice plantation town.  Everyone has to stop at Charleston at least once.  The best way to describe Charleston is to say that it's like a New Orleans with manners.  The old slave market is now a crafts market.  Shopping and dining is excellent.   The taxis that are converted London cabs are fun to take for a bit of elegance.  Beaufort, SC is the location for many of the movies based on Pat Conroy's books.  Forest Gump was filmed here, with Tom Hanks (who the locals adore) and Prince of Tides directed by Barbara Streisand (who the locals despise).  Take the horse drawn tour of Beaufort.  We usually stay at Port Royal Landing.  Tom, Larry, Ryan, and the rest of the staff are great.  The back porch has the best $5 hamburger anywhere.  Stop on Friday night and you can karaoke with the locals.  Savannah is next on the agenda.  You don't actually go into the city - the river is too busy and too urban to do that safely.  Stop at Thunderbolt and see the mega-yachts being refurbished.  Thunderbolt offers service at a reasonable price to you, too.  Rent a car to get into the city - taxis are too expense.  Hertz and Enterprise deliver to the marina.  River Street Sweets was awarded the prestigious Patsy and Cary best Praline on the ICW medal.  Give them a try.  Pralines are absolutely wonderful in the morning with black coffee.  The next stop over is Kilkenny Marina.  Kilkenny is up a deep creek a few miles.  Good fuel prices and an unusual experience make this the place to stop.  The restaurant next door has re-opened, called the Marker 107.  The menu looks great.  Do NOT wear the t-shirt that says, "If you hear banjo music - RUN!!!"  They can be easily offended.  St. Simons Island is how God intended all of us to live.  We stay (reluctantly) at Golden Isles Marina.  Better if you get Chick as the dockhand, but everyone knows Melissa on the ICW.  Fernandina Beach is the first Florida stop.  Again, Fernandina Beach is a great place to walk around in.  You can use the marina, a mooring ball, or anchor out.  I don't recommend any place in Jacksonville to stop.  It's just too busy and has too much current.  St. Augustine is next.  If St. Augustine was just a little warmer, this is where I'd stay.  It's easy to spend a week at St. Augustine - Patsy and I usually spend a couple of months there coming south.  We stay at Oyster Creek Marina, not recommended for deep draft (5 feet or more) because of shoaling at the upper end of the creek.  The winery and free samples and tours is a short walk away from Oyster Creek.  Then Daytona Beach, Titusville (and NASA), Cocoa Beach, Melbourne, Port St. Lucie, and Stuart.

Patsy and I anchored out about a third of the time on our last trip south.  We could have stayed out almost all of the time.   We needed to provision the boat and that's easier to do at a dock than with a dinghy.  Once, we were so tired after a tough day that we just left the ICW and anchored beside it, expecting to get rocked around all night.  There was no traffic.  Very few boaters use the ICW at night.

The trip takes some planning, but it is not overwhelming.  It's helpful to go with someone who has made the trip before, but that's not critical.  In some ways, it's like being another hobo on the road - it's great when someone can tell you where to stop and what to avoid.  For example, one might think that Savannah is the place to provision, but it's not.  Staying at the Megadock in Charleston is far easier than trying to get into a slip at the Ashley River Marina in Charleston.  Knowing when the freaking bridges open is also a nice tip.  One learns that trying to travel with more than 4 boats becomes a nightmare when trying to make slip reservations.  It's also nice to have some backup when things go not as planned.

The actual transit time from Baltimore to Stuart Florida (we suggest anyplace south of Titusville for the weather) is about three weeks.  You'll need to take a few breaks from the cruising.  The nice thing is, you don't have to make the trip all at once.  Travel for a couple of weeks and leave the boat somewhere for a week or so while you catch up.  Then, pick up the boat and continue south.  We have a list of proven repair facilities and other helpful information.

Go ahead, make the trip.
 
Events

ICW Cruise, November 1, 2009, Hampton City Docks, Hampton, VA 23605.  Bruce Muller is planning to lead an intrepid group of cruisers (up to four boats) south from Hampton to southern Florida.  Contact Bruce directly by using clicking here.  The deadline for signing up is October 15, but it is most helpful if you contact Bruce sooner.

Florida East Coast Rendezvous, February 26, 2010, Harborage Yacht Club and Marina, Stuart, Florida 34994.  Several years ago, we had a successful Rendezvous on the West Coast of Florida.  We're going to try to re-create the same excitement on the east coast early next year. The Harborage Yacht Club and Marina has as many slips as we can use and there are two restaurants on site - one a more formal, table cloth restaurant and the other a more casual, larger restaurant.  The marina itself has excellent facilities, including a workout room, swimming pool, and hot tub.  We'll have a potluck dinner on Friday night and vendor presentations on Saturday morning.  We are still working on the budget for this event.