The Intracoastal Waterway through Georgia and South Carolina

THE AICW

I had no idea, before we left Florida, that the AICW (Atlantic Intra-coastal Waterway) would change its' character several times as we moved north through Georgia and the Carolinas.  The Florida portion is what you would expect from Florida, mostly right along the Atlantic, separated from the ocean by a narrow strip of barrier islands, wending its' way northward through heavily populated areas in the south, the banks slowly growing more rural the further north one travels.  Once we hit St Augustine that all began to change, along with the weather.

In St Augustine we were treated to a hellacious thunderstorm, followed by unseasonably cool weather.  A few days after leaving St Augustine, we had weather into the high 30's for our night time lows, since then we have been tangling with early spring weather , for much of the waterway since St Augustine, with many of the deciduous trees on the banks either just leafing out or still bare branches.  We are racing spring as we move north, it would be nice to slow down and let early summer catch up with us, but we need to keep moving so that we can reach Canada before summer ends. (As I write this, we are anchored in a lovely little harbor on Ocracoke Island in The Outer Banks of North Carolina (just south of Kitty Hawk) waiting for a Nor'easter to blow through, with our daily high for the next two days expected in the mid-50's.  I tell you this not to complain about the weather but to let you know that if you decide to take this trip, consider taking two years instead of only one, that will give you time to slow down and smell the coffee).

As the weather was changing, so was the AICW.  As we moved from northern Florida into Georgia several things happened simultaneously; we went totally rural, the banks almost totally in a natural state instead of covered with expensive housing, the waterway rapidly transformed itself from a easy to navigate canal to a labyrinth of rivers, rife with tidal currents, punctuated with man-made cuts every few miles, these man-made cuts acting as connecting links between the rivers, and the tide became a major player in our day-to-day decision-making. Plus the foliage on the banks changed from trees to marsh grass in Georgia and lower SC, then slowly back to trees as we moved further north into SC.  Marsh grass does not offer much protection against the wind, so we much appreciated the return of the larger trees, which help block the wind and make an anchorage much more serene.

In Florida the tidal range was at most two feet, so there was no noticeable tidal current, but in Georgia the spring tides were up to nine feet (the spring tides are noted for their "extra" range- the moon's cycle causes the spring tides to be much larger than tides during the rest of the year.  It is the moon, not the sun, that has the greatest influence on our oceans' tides) and this much larger tidal range (the difference in the waters' height measured between high and low tide) caused serious currents where the incoming and outgoing tidal flow moved through narrow channels ,  We traveled many miles in these narrow river channels, so we had to keep careful track of the state of the tide, so that we could predict what the current would do to us in places where the river was narrow (often bridges are placed at the narrowest part of the waterway , so we often faced the strongest currents when going under a bridge), especially if we had to wait for a bridge to open ( we are 21 ft tall , so any bridge with less than 22 feet of clearance from the water had to open for us).  Many bridges, in an attempt to keep the motorist happy, only open on a schedule, usually every thirty minutes, if we arrived at the bridge before the scheduled opening, we had to wait.  If there was substantial current, it made our delay all that more interesting, since we had to circle in narrow channel, dodging other boats, and also correcting for the strong current.

In Georgia and South Carolina, the AICW is mainly routed through natural rivers, since all of the rivers are naturally flowing to the Atlantic Ocean (generally eastward), this means we travel upriver for a while, then through a man-made canal (usually called a "cut"), then downriver on the next river, then through another cut, then upriver..............you get the idea.  We zig-zagged our way across two states, moving from one river to another, traveling generally north and east. 

When the tide flows inland, it is called a flood tide, in the other direction it is an ebb tide.  There are two high and low tides per day, each slack tide about 6 hours apart.  If the tide was flooding, and we were headed upstream, we would have a current pushing us along with it.  We average about six knots in calm waters, in some flood currents we might enjoy an extra two knot push, giving us an overall speed of eight knots.  If, at that point, we transited one of these man-made cuts, we would then be moving downstream in another river, but since this new river would be experiencing the same flood tidal current, we would now be fighting a two knot current, our overall speed would now be four knots.  In a normal day we might move through three or four different rivers, experiencing this current switch that many times in a day, it is no wonder that we seemed to go through more gin than usual.

And this was even more challenging because of Congress, the budget mess had reduced the money available to the Army Corp of Engineers for dredging, in both Georgia and SC the dredging money is distributed to the different districts based on the commercial tonnage of shipped goods (by water), the AICW doesn't move much commercial cargo, therefore it gets very little dredging.  What this means for the boater traveling the ACW is the danger of running aground.  The AICW is SUPPOSED to have a minimum depth, at low tide, of 10 feet.  In many of the areas prone to shoaling, there are depths as little as three feet  (at low tide), so the only way to approach these areas is at mid-tide or better, with a rising tide.  That way if you do run aground, the rising tide will help float you free of the bottom.

The tidal current also makes anchoring an interesting proposition, many of the better anchorages are in small rivers and creeks, away from the main waterway to avoid the wakes from passing traffic, and since the tidal current switches direction every six hours  the boat swings 180 degrees every six hours.  Every boater assumes their anchored boat will face bow into the wind, but if the water current is stronger than the wind, the boat "faces" into the current.  It wasn't uncommon to wake up in the middle of the night and go up on deck to check the boat, and find the boat stern-to into a stiff breeze, sometimes as much as 25 knots.  This can be alarming the first few times, because it is so unnatural if you are accustomed to anchoring where there is no current, after awhile it was fun to watch the boats around us swinging on their anchors in awkward orientations and knowing our boat looked just as awkward.

We had a few highlights on the way:

We stopped in Charleston SC to visit the Yorktown WWII Naval Museum, where we not only toured the Yorktown but also had the chance to visit a WWII destroyer and sub.  Patty wanted to find the memorial to the escort carrier Gambier Bay, a ship that was sunk during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, taking her Uncle Harold Devine with it to the bottom.  We found his name on the memorial plaque.

We also stopped in Myrtle Beach SC to visit with Patty's aunt Nancy and uncle Dick.

 When we stopped in Myrtle Beach, we decided we had to stay at The Osprey Marina, just a few miles from her house, because our boat is named OSPREY.  The last ten or fifteen miles before we arrived at the marina told the story why the marina is named after the Osprey- there are so many active Osprey nests along this stretch of the AICW that we easily had 5-10 nests in sight at any given moment.  The place was crazy with Osprey, which we found delightful.

 I have another story about a different kind of Osprey flying around our trawler, which I will share with you in my next blog..........................