We’ve been in Ft. Pierce, Florida, in the Ft. Pierce City
Marina since this past Saturday. We came in to wait out yet another passing
cold front and to take a few days’ rest from the Atlantic Intracoastal
Waterway, or ‘ICW,’ aka ‘the ditch.’
The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, aka 'The Ditch'
We left Brunswick Landing Marina on January 19th
and spent our first night in the ditch at anchor behind Cumberland Island.
Typically, on a trip like this, we’d prefer to sail offshore. However, as Lisa
and I had both been quite sick with the crud, we decided it best to not subject
ourselves to the rigors of offshore sailing in the cold weather until we were
further south. The decision was made to travel down the ditch until
Jacksonville, FL, then hop offshore at the St. Johns River. We have sailing
friends in Jacksonville and planned to stay in a marina to meet with them. The
idea was to move offshore the following day.
Mother nature had other plans. We ended up sitting in
Jacksonville for the next three days as a strong cold front moved over us. This
was the same weather system which brought tornadoes to many southern states. Fortunately, we had no tornadoes but we did have winds of 30-40mph and a fair amount of rain.
After the weather system had passed and on the following Tuesday, the winds
offshore were coming from the south – the exact direction which we want to go.
Once again, we took to the ditch and pushed daily to make miles, averaging
around 50 miles per day. Palm Coast, New Smyrna Beach, Titusville, Melbourne,
and now Ft. Pierce. Good anchorages are slim along these stretches and we spent
our nights in marinas secured to a dock.
The waterway is beautiful along much of the US eastern and
Gulf coasts. It is wild and undeveloped in Georgia and much of South Carolina, but
Florida south of Palm Coast is largely urban sprawl. It can be stressful too,
as the waterway is treacherously shallow in spots. By law, the ICW is supposed
to be maintained at a minimum depth of 12’ at the lowest level of tide. It
isn’t. There are many stretches in Georgia where the waterway is simply not
passable at low tide. Places along the waterway in Florida are approaching the
same situation. The issue is how the funds for maintenance of the channels are
appropriated: funding for maintaining the waterway is based upon the amount of
commerce moving on the waterway. But when the shoals build up and moving cargo
and commodities on the ICW becomes problematic, the movement of cargo upon the
waterway slows or even stops altogether. With no commerce moving, there’s no
funding to maintain the depths and the rest of the waterway infrastructure. It’s
the original Catch-22. Recreational boats, such as ours, who make up the vast
majority of waterway users don’t count in the figures.
On the wide but frightfully shallow Indian River; the average depth we saw was 8.5'; one of the many drawbridges we passed through can be seen in the distance
Also, we couldn’t easily sail on the waterway as it’s too
narrow in most places. All of our miles were made under diesel power. This
isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as diesel engines in sail boats are often
woefully neglected.
Our own set of minor waterway troubles caught up with us,
when on our way to our stop in New Smyrna Beach, we went aground just south of
Ponce de Leon Inlet. We swung too wide on one navigational mark and hit the
sandy, muddy, bottom which was shaped like a ridged potato chip. We went over
the first hump in the muck only to ride up on another. As the tide rose and we
attempted to extricate ourselves, we repeated this same action three different
times. At one point, we were almost centered directly between the channel marks
and still fast aground. Eventually, we called a tow boat and once he arrived,
we were off in less than 90 seconds. JO
BETH is fine, as are we, but it was not a super fun couple of hours. We saw
a good number of boats aground on shallow spots that same day.
(For our fellow
boaters and sailors out there; make sure your boat insurance policy includes
towing coverage. If it doesn’t, you can get it through associations such as
Boat/US or SeaTow. How much was the bill for the ‘un-grounding’ you ask? Nearly
$1,000.00. Fortunately, we are covered at fraction of that cost for the entire
year.)
And then there are the bridges which crisscross the
waterway. Most of them are the large spans fixed at a height of 65’ which we
can easily pass beneath, but a few of them are drawbridges. There’s a protocol
for passing through a drawbridge; first, we hail the bridge tender on VHF
radio. We identify ourselves, and even though in most cases we were the only
boat approaching, we had to formally request that the bridge be opened. Some bridges
open on request, others are on a schedule of opening on the hour and half hour and/or
upon request, and some are locked down during high traffic times. Bridge
tenders are known to be a temperamental lot, (there’s one in south Florida
known for only responding to hails when the full formal name of the bridge is
used), but the ones we dealt with over the last week were courteous and
professional.
Approaching The Bridge of Lions on our passage through St. Augustine, Florida
Needless to say, we’re looking forward to sailing in the
ocean once again and putting the waterway behind us for a while. The changes
coming south have been fun to watch. The water has shifted from a gray muddy
brown to a blue green and is clear enough to actually see the dolphins swimming
beside us before they break the surface. We have manatees around the boat at
night and tides are a reasonable two or three feet instead of eight to ten
feet. Palm and Sea Grape trees dot the waterfront, and the shores are built up
by mangroves and not marshes. All signs we’re making it south.
The water is getting lovely; the red and green intracoastal waterway markers through which we've just passed can be seen
