After we got bounced around offshore going north from Ft. Lauderdale to West Palm Beach, Florida, we decided that our next leg would be on the dread Intracoastal Waterway (ICW).
For those not in the nautical know, today's ICW is a channel about 3000 miles long that extends from Norfolk, Virginia in the north to the Florida Keys in the south. It roughly parallels the Atlantic coastline. It's basically a sheltered waterway comprised of natural streams, rivers and estuaries as well as dredged channels, marked with buoys and daymarkers, that allows commercial and recreational traffic to travel in relative speed and safety from Point A to Point B without having to risk the treacherous waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Because on the US East Coast, when the weather gets bad – it gets REALLY BAD. And the Atlantic waters get even worse.
The ICW has advantages: there are historic sites all along it, plus lots of cities, small towns, and undeveloped anchorages. If you want a marina, there's almost always one to suit you within a day's travel from wherever you are. Most boaters never even travel overnight, because (depending on your boat's draft) you can pretty much find a spot to move off the ICW and drop an anchor where you feel the urge. For us deeper drafts, though, it's a bit more of a problem, because in many, many sections of the ICW the water shoals very quickly once you leave the dredged channel. Actually, nowadays, due to lack of funding for dregular dredging, there are many, many places *IN* the ICW's channel that are shoal.
The ICW's disadvantages: there are many bridges spanning it, that boats must pass under; some newer, fixed bridges are 65 feet or higher at their midpoint so present no problem for any boat with a mast shorter than 65 feet (ours is about 58 feet including our antennas). However, there are lots of bridges – especially railroad bridges – that are much lower. Those are usually occupied by a bridge tender you hail on the VHF radio to ask them nicely to open the bridge for you. Each bridge has a different schedule for opening, which can make forward progress very pesky.
Other disadvanatges: as mentioned above, the channel is narrow in many places and the water is very skinny. Many portions of the ICW cannot be transited by a draft like ours (6' 2") except at high tide. That certainly slows down the day's forward momentum. Now, I know that the view in this pic of the ICW doesn't look bad – but that's a two-way channel & some of the motor yachts that drive down it are very big and wide. The channel itself does not extend as far as the water goes, but only takes up the center third of what you see in the photo. Next time I photograph the ICW I promise I'll do it with some oncoming traffic so you can see how tight it can get. You might think I'm hypersensitive, but in my experience the greatest hazard to a boat is…OTHER BOATS.
Yes, the other boat traffic. Ye gods. I realize the boating population in Florida is dense, but a very high percentage of those boaters have no clue about the difference between a boat and a car: they just turn on the ignition and go. The ICW is so narrow that when a boat passes you, they're only a few feet away. So you really hope that there's a competent operator on that oncoming boat. And, because the boat passes so close to you, just before the large wake hits, you can see the open containers of liquor and whatnot. This one time, we were the lead boat of 5, waiting for a bridge to open. A small power skiff with 2-1/2 couples aboard, Mike's Hard Lemonade all around, passed the 5 of us and stopped in the shade of the bridge. And then? Just as the bridge finally opened to let us 5 boats through, these bozos jumped into to the water for a swim. Under a bridge. In the middle of the ICW. With 5 boats revving up to run right over them. You know: literally equivalent to playing on a freeway. Ergo, Florida boaters are Dangerously Stupid.
So that's the ICW. And we decided to drive on it from Lake Worth to Stuart, Florida, because after all it was less than 26 miles. What could possibly go wrong?
Yeah: (1) 8 bascule bridges, one railroad bridge, and 2 fixed bridges – an average of more than two bridges PER MILE. (2) Depths along the ICW's mid-channel of 8 feet or less. (3) Lots of concentration on the depth sounder, the charts, & the red & green day markers (that may or may not still mark the actual deepest path due to contant shoaling). (4) Lots of people in small power boats, boozin' and cruisin' – at over 12 knots per hour, weaving in and out of the other boat traffic, i.e., us. (5) Swimming under bridges in front of traffic.
Upon leaving the ICW to turn westward up the St. Lucie River to make the final approach to Stuart, we temporarily bumped the bottom where the channel has a reputation for constant shoaling. We backed off and all was well, but we were still driving over portions where we had about one foot of water under the keel. It took us almost 9 hours to go those 26 miles. Nine LONG hours. We learned later from some ICW veterans that the Lake Worth-to-Stuart stretch is considered one of the the worst along the whole ICW, for precisely the reasons I just described: too many bridges, significant shoaling right where you don't need it, and a very high idiot quotient.
Did I mention we did this leg on Friday, May 13, 2011? Haaaaaaa.
We were relieved to finally make it through and under all 11 bridges and in to Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart without any harm done. After a small kerfuffle with marina management regarding our slip reservation, everything was sorted out and Sunset Bay Marina welcomed us with open arms. We were happy to call it home for the following 7 weeks we refitted The Fox.
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