The Intra-Coastal Waterway (or ICW)

We have cruised on our sailboat for almost ten years and during that time we have taken two trips to the Chesapeake Bay and back to Florida along the Intra-Coastal Waterway or ICW. The Atlantic coast ICW is roughly 1000 miles long and runs from Miami to Norfolk, Virginia. There is actually more ICW on the Gulf coast and in places north of the Chesapeake Bay, but most people think of that 1,000 mile stretch when the ICW is mentioned. The ICW is protected from bad weather for the most part.......not that the weather doesn't get bad, the water just doesn't get very rough. So you can make progress north or south even when it is too nasty outside in the ocean to sail (which is most of the time during the periods when north and south transits are made). So the benefit of the ICW is that you are protected from rough seas and there is usually a place to stop for the night every night, meaning that there are no overnight passages to deal with. The negative attributes of the ICW are legion among sailors. The channel is narrow, often not very deep, and often busy with other boat traffic. Many of the other boaters are casual weekend skippers who do not know or care about the rules of the road or courtesy. Still, the ICW is very beautiful and interesting much of the time and there are plenty of challenges when it comes to passing barges and dealing with bridges, 8 foot tides, shoals in the middle of the channel, alligators, drunk jet skiers and so on. I wrote the song The ICW Blues about our second trip along the ICW and the other songs on the CD of the same name were also inspired by our sailing adventures. The ICW Blues