PRACTICAL

SPECIAL REPORT

PETER NIELSEN ON CRUISING THE ICW

Perhaps you’ve cruised the Caribbean and fancy heading up the east coast of the United States to sample the fine cruising grounds of the Chesapeake Bay or New England. Or perhaps you’re a Canadian sailor itching to escape the brutal northern winter. Either way, you will become acquainted with the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

The ICW – or ‘The Ditch’, as it is affectionately known by many – stretches 1,088 miles (statute, not nautical) from Mile Marker 1 in Norfolk, Virginia, to its end point in Key West. It is part of a 3,000-mile series of interconnected waterways that can take you all the way from Virginia to Texas. On the east coast, it’s a busy highway in the autumn and spring. The snowbirds flock south in the fall, gathering on the Chesapeake to head south after the Annapolis Boat Show in October and get to Florida as the hurricane season ends in late November. In the spring, there’s a procession of boats heading back to the Chesapeake or downeast to Maine.

American sailors have something of a love hate relationship with the ICW. On the one hand they deplore the need to motor the best part of 1,000