Along the Waterway
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Boaters (and non-boaters) who are not familiar with the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) often ask us questions about what IS the waterway, and what is it like to travel on the waterway. The Intracoastal Waterway is a 3000 mile waterway along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States. Some lengths consist of natural inlets, salt-water rivers, bays, and sounds... others are man-made canals. The waterway provides a navigable route (most of the time!) without many of the hazards of travel on the open sea... (mainly... calm waters!).
The waterway runs for most of the length of the Eastern Seaboard, beginning at the Manasquan River in New Jersey, and all the way to Brownsville, Texas. The waterway is toll-free, but commercial users such as barges pay a fuel tax that is used to maintain and improve it. The ICW is a significant portion of the "Great Loop", a circumnavigation route used by boaters encircling the eastern half of North America.
The Intracoastal Waterway (also known as "the Ditch") has a good deal of commercial activity... barges haul petroleum, foodstuffs, building materials and manufactured goods. When we traveled the Gulf Coast ICW on our trips from New Orleans to the islands off the coast of Mississippi, we saw a lot of commercial barge traffic. On our ICW trip through Florida and Georgia, there is very little commercial traffic. On the east coast, some of the traffic in the spring and fall is by boaters who regularly move south in winter and north in summer. Numerous inlets connect the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico with the ICW. These allow boaters who travel on the ocean to come inside the waterway to visit ports or travel on the waterway when the ocean is too rough to travel.
The creation of the Intracoastal Waterway was authorized by Congress in 1919. It is maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Although Federal law provides for the waterway to be maintained at a minimum depth of 12 feet, inadequate funding has prevented that. Consequently, shoaling or shallow water are problems along several sections of the waterway, particularly in areas where there is little commercial traffic. In our recent trip from St. Simon's Island to Savannah, we encountered several trouble spots along the way, causing us to look at tide tables to make sure we transited these areas at high tide. Georgia has tremendous tidal swings, usually a difference of 6 to 9 feet of water between high and low tides. Our boat "draws" (requires) 5.8 feet of water to stay afloat, so we generally get nervous if we start to see less than 8 feet of water under our keel.
What about those tidal swings???
Tides are the rises and falls of sea level caused by the combined effect of the rotation of the Earth and the gravitation of the Moon and the Sun. Most coastal areas experience two daily high tides and two daily low tides, usually six hours apart. This is because at the point right "under" the Moon, the water is at its closest to the Moon, so it experiences stronger gravity and rises. On the opposite side of the Earth, the water is at its farthest from the moon, so it is pulled less. As the Earth moves more toward the Moon than the water does-- causing that water to "rise" (relative to the Earth) as well. In between, the force on the water is diagonal to the sub-lunar axis, resulting in low tide. (Whew! I never knew tides could be so complicated... thanks to Wikipedia for that explanation!). When we had our boat docked in the New Orleans area, we only had about 1 to 1.5 foot tidal swings between the high tide and the low tide. Georgia... now that's a different story! With a 6 to 9 foot tidal swing, it is very important to keep up with when the high tide and low tide information. We access a web site, www.saltwatertides.com, to get tidal information. We find out what times the high and low tides are, and what the height in feet the tidal change is. When we get ready to anchor the boat, we take this information into account so we know how many feet of water to anchor the boat. For example, if the tidal swing is 9 feet, and we anchor the boat at high tide, we need to anchor in about 19-20 feet of water. This will allow for about 10 feet of water under the boat at low tide. If you don't pay attention to the tidal information, you may just find yourself aground at low tide, with your boat stuck and unable to move. If you are hard aground (really stuck!), you will just have to wait until the tide rises again before you can move the boat. Definitely not fun, especially if the next high tide comes around at 3:00 a.m.! And, the times for the high and low tides change every day.... so one day, the high tide might be at 10 am and 10 pm, but the next day it might be at 11 am and 11 pm. So, we access the internet web site in advance and print out tide information for areas that we will be visiting for the next month or so. That way, if we can't get on the internet at remote islands (like Cumberland or Jekyll!), we still have access to the information.
Well, it can always be worse..... there are some extreme cases of tides. The Bay of Fundy, on the east coast of Canada, has the world's largest documented tidal ranges, 52 feet, because of its shape. 52 feet??? You gotta be kidding! How would you like to take this kind of tide into account to anchor your boat?? Guess I need to quit complaining about this little 9 foot tidal swing we have here in Georgia!
So, what do we see as we travel along the waterway?
We see mile markers that let us know where we are in the Waterway, and which side of the channel we need to be in. As we travel up the east coast in the ICW, the red markers stay to the left of our boat (the "port" side) and the green markers stay on the right of our boat (the "starboard" side). Sometimes the markers have osprey nests on them (sometimes occupied by an osprey.... and sometimes other seabirds and, at this time of the year.. often empty). Sometimes the markers are way out of the water when the tide is low, and sometimes they just peek out of the water at high tide. We can tell how far we are off high tide by looking a the water line on the marker. See the waterline on the green marker? That tells us that we are about 1.5 feet off high tide. We can look at the water flow along the bottom of the marker to tell whether the tide is coming in or going out... also, we can tell this by how fast our boat is going... if the tide is coming in (going "against" us), the boat slows down to 4 to 5 knots.... if we the tide is going out (going "with" us), the boat speeds up to around 7 knots.
We see signs to tell us to
slow down and leave no wake.....
signs to let us know it is ok to resume speed....
signs to tell us where
marinas, fuel, bait, and tackle are.....
We see marsh grasses and wild pristine wooded areas. Marsh birds picking their way along the shoreline.
Sometimes we see a rainbow.
We see shrimp boats with funny names.
We pass by marinas with boats moored in the harbor and boats at the dock.
Sometimes we see a sunken boat... an unfortunate reminder that accidents sometime happen along the waterway and we must always be vigilant as we travel.
We see beautiful homes, boats and docks along the waterway.
We see little towns along the waterway. This is Thunderbolt, Georgia...a suburb of Savannah. This is our destination "along the waterway" to Savannah. All of the photos shown in this story were taken in our little three day trip from St. Simon's Island to Thunderbolt. Just shows you how picturesque the waterway is and how enjoyable it is to travel along the waterway.
We will anchor in this little waterway, Turner Creek, and visit the beautiful city of Savannah.
