Most mariners navigating along the Atlantic Coast spend at least part of their passage in the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (AICW). Some people call it The Ditch, but that moniker doesn’t do it justice: The AICW is a 1,244-mile combination of bays, creeks, sounds, rivers, canals and a little bit of ocean that stretches from Norfolk, Virginia, to Key West, Florida. It provides commercial, military, fishing and recreational traffic with a route safe from Atlantic storms and, in wartime, the enemy’s navy. Navigation is easy if you pay attention, the bottom is mostly soft if you don’t, and there are plenty of boatyards if you need repairs. The AICW is a trip every boater should make at least once. Allow plenty of time for gunkholing.
The AICW is part of the 3,000-mile-long Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), which starts in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and runs to Brownsville, Texas. (Other sections are the short-and-shallow New Jersey ICW and the 1,300-mile Gulf ICW, heavily trafficked by tugs and barges.) There are several off shore passages on the ICW, both in New England and along the coast of Florida; any of them can be boisterous under the right (or wrong) conditions. The Delaware and Chesapeake Bays are
