ICW Endeavors

Position: 33°54’52″N 78°14’13″W

There’s a pattern emerging already: almost everything we assumed about this part of the journey has been incorrect. Beginning with our timeline. We left Portland for Baltimore on December 1, and, naïve me, I thought we’d set sail on December 3. For a number of reasons, some completely unexpected, and some not so surprising, we didn’t push off until December 16. When we finally made it to Norfolk, VA, and Mile One of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), I reckoned we’d be in for an uncomplicated cruise. At least until we made the crossing to the Bahamas. However, the “easy way” down via the ICW is anything but. Give me offshore unknown risks with dicey weather over the stress of trying to navigate a sailboat with a 6-foot draft and 60+ foot mast along the ICW any day.

Magical

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time it’s been truly enjoyable, and at times magical. Traversing as you do a variety of bodies of water each with unique conditions. The upside of getting such a late start (I’m convinced we won the prize for the last boat heading south for the season) is we had days when we had the entire waterway to ourselves and never saw another boat. The lock and bridge operators genuinely seemed excited to see us, if only to break the monotony and give them something to do. Days of just us and the abundant bird-life. We’ve spotted eagles, cranes, pelicans, cormorants, and egrets. Dolphins surfaced occasionally and that always bring me joy. They remind me to relish the moments when they appear.

Pucker Factor

Then there were the not so enjoyable moments, like running aground at night. Then another oh-so-close second grounding and inching our way through cold, torrential rain with little visibility. We learned to start our days poring over charts and Army Corp of Engineers hydrographic surveys. We’d download the latest survey updates from the web, then seek insights from fellow cruisers who had recently traveled the same routes. “Stay way off bend and don’t cut the corner”, they told us. “Hug the green marker”, “Depths of 3’(!) at Mean Low Water”, “Go dead slow and line up red 38, 40 and 42”. Sometimes we got just enough conflicting information to make us question whether we were nuts to even try and make it through.

We got to a point of finishing our lengthy periods of morning planning with a “pucker factor” rating for the day. Anything with scoring 6 out of 10 or greater meant it was going to be a very tense day, and those were becoming the norm. We also learned it’s a lot more fun to reflect back on the accuracy of the daily score after we’d successfully navigated shoals and hazards and were safely anchored. Before the next morning’s planning ritual and the adventure started over again.