Brothers on a boat: Cruising the ICW

By Bill

My brother Wayne has dreamt for years about buying a boat to live on. (Maybe wanderlust runs in the family?) When he called to say he had done it, I was thrilled for him, and then doubly thrilled when he invited Kathryn and me to help move the boat from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Lake Ontario.

Road trip! Actually, it was more like fly, boat, and then road trip.

With our daughter’s fast-approaching wedding in early June, Kathryn sadly declined but suggested our brother-in-law Chris as a replacement crew member.

“He’s way more useful than me on a boat,” Kathryn said, knowing that Chris grew up sailing and racing boats and knows how to tie knots like a pro. Chris jumped at the offer.

The plan was to motor as far north along the Intracoastal Waterway (the ICW) as we could in a week. Then two other crew members would meet us wherever we ended up and Chris and I would drive their car back to Canada, in time for Chris to go back to work and for me to help prepare for our daughter’s wedding. The new crew would take the yacht up the Hudson River into the Erie Canal, the Oswego Canal and then across Lake Ontario to Belleville. The entire trip should take about 15 days.

So, in mid-May, four of us flew to Fort Lauderdale: me, Chris, Wayne, and his wife, Christina. U.S. Customs expressed concern that we had no return flights booked and were staying on a boat with no fixed address. Fortunately, they let us into the country.

“Just In Time,” Wayne and Christina’s yacht, is a 1999 60’ Viking Sport Fisher, with two diesel engines, an enclosed bridge with air conditioning, three staterooms (bedrooms), three heads (marine toilets) and two salons. A very impressive boat with many luxuries!

Leaving Fort Lauderdale was the first challenge. Getting a feel for how the boat maneuvered while navigating narrow river sections, 180-degree hairpin turns, lift bridges and multi-million-dollar properties presented a good initiation. The shipyard was seven kilometres inland as the crow flies, but about 13 kilometres while boating along the winding New River towards the Atlantic Ocean. While we planned to do most of the trip on the ICW, the first few days would be at sea since the weather was good and you can go a lot faster there.

As we got closer to the river’s end, I started to wonder about what I’d said “Yes” to. Wayne and I both grew up with boats, living on the Rideau River north of Kingston, Ontario. Wayne, who is a certified boat captain and works as a diesel mechanic, could deal with anything yacht-related but still, we were headed to the North Atlantic where I’d only been a boat passenger before. We had life jackets and a tender (the little boat on top of the yacht for safety escapes), so what could go wrong? I am sure no one was thinking about Gilligan’s Island…

Our first day was spectacular. The sea was calm and the boat worked well. We saw dolphins everywhere, including some riding our bow wave. We passed sea turtles getting air at the surface and saw only a few container ships.

We knew we must be close to Cape Canaveral when we saw a “rocket’s red glare.” We stood gawking at it, as it disappeared in about 30 seconds. A quick Google check revealed that, yes, Elon Musk had been busy. A SpaceX Falcon 9 had launched on a Starlink satellite mission that day. Soon enough, Cape Canaveral’s iconic launch towers came into view.

At Canaveral, we headed into the Intracoastal Waterway – a 4,800-kilometre inland waterway that stretches from Massachusetts southward along the Atlantic coast, rounds the tip of Florida and follows the Gulf Coast all the way to Texas. Some of it is natural rivers, inlets and bays and some is man-made canals; together it provides a waterway that is largely protected from the ocean.

Our first ICW surprise was encountering a lock. Turns out the ICW has several. We think this helps reduce the tidal swing on the waterway and may also help with storm surges, but I could not confirm that.

After a few hours on the ICW, we arrived at our first marina for the night. Boaters staying only one night are called transients and there are usually only a few slips left for them. This marina assigned us a 20-foot slip built for a 40-foot boat, with another boat very close by – Captain Wayne’s first docking challenge.

Many heads popped out of sailboats to watch him dock his 60-foot yacht into such a tight space. But he spun that yacht around and backed in like a pro! I was proud of my little brother! I almost cheered but decided that would undercut his well-earned pride in his accomplishment. It had been a long but spectacular first day and we headed to the marina restaurant to celebrate.

On the first day we covered about 380 kilometres because we ran at 15 to 20 nautical miles per hour since we were mostly on the open ocean. But at that speed the boat gobbles gas (and $$). Once we got into the ICW we had to go much slower, since most of the ICW is a “no wake” zone, especially when going past huge stately homes. That meant we cruised at a bit above idle speed for Just In Time. On the plus side, the yacht used very little gas at that slow speed, we didn’t have to contend with ocean waves or swells, and we had plenty of time to watch for wildlife.

Most days, we travelled 70 to 100 nautical miles (that’s 130 to 185 kilometres) at speeds of 8 to 14 nautical miles per hour.

Filling up with diesel was definitely painful. It cost about $6.50 USD per gallon – about $2.10 Cdn per litre – and the yacht could take 700 gallons in its three tanks. You do the math!

The following days kind of blurred together – a jumble of wildlife sightings, passing through locks and under bridges, navigating, nearly getting shot at, seeing historic Fort Sumter, and finding marinas for the night. I see now why Kathryn keeps a travel journal – otherwise it’s hard to remember what happened on which day. We settled into a routine of getting onto the water by 6:30 a.m. and into a marina by 8 p.m.

We continued to see dolphins all the way up to North Carolina. Nearly every marker buoy had an osprey atop it. On day two we also saw a few manatees. Very cool. The only wildlife I expected to see but didn’t was alligators – even on the Alligator River in North Carolina. I learned that this was the northern-most population of alligators. They were just elusive.

We dodged crab pots almost the entire journey. They consisted of little floating buoys, about the size of a milk carton, dotted everywhere except in the very centre of the channel. If you ran over one, it would likely foul up your propellor. We also saw several shrimp boats in operation, their long arms opening on either side to drag the net behind the boat.

As crew members, our most stressful job was docking – the time when damage to the boat, crew or marina is most likely to happen. Captain Wayne did all the piloting then. Crew had to get the fenders (bumpers) out and in the right location to protect the boat and then get lines tied to the wharf to hold the boat. The most dangerous part was judging when to step off the boat onto the wharf. You should never have to jump and it can be done only at the stern (back of the boat). So, the captain must get the stern close enough to the dock so we could step off and then secure the boat. We sometimes had help from other cruisers already docked and sometimes it was just the four of us.

While cruising, Chris did a lot of the piloting (driving the boat) while I became a somewhat-useful navigator. We navigated using a Garmin-based GPS and an app called Navionics running on an iPad. Despite myriad route options, we made only one wrong turn the entire trip and that was the first turn leaving the shipyard in Fort Lauderdale.

Wayne spent a lot of time cleaning the boat and its equipment and repairing things. Christina was a great navigator, head chef and docking master. And yes, having two people who answered to “Chris” did cause some confusion!

In the Charleston, South Carolina harbour, we saw the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier, now a floating museum. And in Norfolk, Virginia, tall cranes were building battleships rather than buildings. We passed U.S. Border Services in their patrol boats. Along the ICW we saw jet skis, Boston whalers, sailboats, barges and other yachts like ours, the largest about 75 feet long. The ICW has a guaranteed minimum depth at low tide of 6.5 feet so that limits the size of vessels.

Scenes along the ICW included some big homes near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (a no-wake zone), wilder sections where we saw more wildlife, tall cranes building battleships, U.S. Border Services on patrol, and some spectacular sunsets and sunrises.

Countless bridges criss-cross the ICW, many of them lift bridges. We learned to time our arrival for on the hour when they opened to let boats through, otherwise we had to sit waiting for too long. For the most part we did this just right. But then came the day that our timing was quite poor – something we couldn’t foresee.

The Marines! 

As we approached Camp Lejeune, a training base in North Carolina for the U.S. Marines, we came upon a small boat with blue flashing lights and an 18-year-old waving his arms at us to emphasize the message that we must stop. The Marines had decided it was time for target practice – with live rounds! So, we stopped. And waited. And waited. After 90 minutes of practising our anchoring skills, we got the “all clear” to proceed. As we motored past the camp, known for its amphibious assault training, we saw many old vehicles left on the beaches for target practice, including some old missile launchers.

We had hoped to get as far as Atlantic City in New Jersey but, as our final day drew nearer, we realized our last port of call would be Norfolk, Virginia. We cruised past a lot of naval hardware into our final marina, where our view included two aircraft carriers under construction.

Two of Wayne and Christina’s friends – our replacements – met us in Norfolk after a 12-hour car ride from Canada. The next morning, Chris and I set off for home on the road trip portion of our adventure. I was thrilled at discovering another way to journey. I left feeling a little sad at not being able to see the end of the journey to Lake Ontario but happy for the time spent with my brother, brother-in-law and sister-in-law!

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Bill cruised the Intracoastal Waterway in May 2022. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.