Why to take the ICW when traveling down the US East Coast (Calico Skies Sailing, Ep 85)
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- Опубліковано 2 сер 2024
- There are two options when heading south down the US east coast, you can take the offshore route which is more exposed to weather but more direct or take the "inside" route down the ICW. The ICW is a 3,000 mile long inland waterway down the Atlantic and Gulf Coast. The waterway is a combination of natural waterways and man-made canals. The stretch through North Carolina runs fairy direct right along coast and does not add many extra miles.
In this episode we travel through a beautiful stretch of the ICW in North Carolina. The Alligator Pungo Canal is one of our favorite spots on the ICW with an abundance of wild life like bald eagles and black bears.
We take our dinghy up a sweet little creek to find a boat ramp where we can stretch our legs making the most of the unseasonably warm weather. We get the drone up to capture the dramatic North Carolina coastal lands.
The weather turns cold and we continue south down the ICW to Cape Fear where we will head back out into the ocean on passage to Florida.
0:00 Intro
1:25 Recap
2:00 Transiting the Alligator Pungo Canal/What is the ICW?
7:36 Exploring North Carolina Swamp lands
12:20 Last few days on the ICW before we head offshore
16:20 Up next!
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This trip through the icw was great, I live very close to the icw in Alabama and have traveled all the way to Appalachicola Florida to mid Louisiana.Great seeing it from your prospective 👍👍Thank you 🙏🙏
Took this route in the late 1970's on a 42 foot schooner I built on the Chesapeake Bay. We were really impressed by the beauty and wildlife along the ICW. Truly another gem to be found in the United States. Thanks for the excellent videos - great quality!
Very cool! Yes the ICW is a pretty neat spot on the east coast, we have some great memories of transiting it!
@@CalicoSkiesSailing You remind me of the adventurous women my wife and I associated with while in the Peace Corps during the 1960s. Yor videos will become a real treasure to you in later years.Take care!
OMG, we LOVED that anchorage. So beautiful...
That was great, but have you seen this yet? ua-cam.com/video/uUks5X96e2g/v-deo.html
Gotta love my tabernacle mounted mainmast!
You have some of the most beautiful and peaceful videos - always a perfect when I need a reset. Wishing you safe travels on your passage to Mexico. 💛
Thank you very much! We safely made it to Mexico, so exciting to be in a new country!!
Good video 👍
I really enjoy these inland adventures. It’s a nice change from blue on blue.
variety is the spice of life!!
i live and sail here in NC. spend a ton of time around Beaufort, a beautiful state, and always love seeing people run through the area who aren't from here. Hope you enjoy your trip.
Very pretty area!
Welcome to NC, it's a pretty cool state from the Atlantic to the Blue Ridge mountains. Thanks for all the videos!
Our pleasure!
Awesome video great scenes...sunset hall of fame
Thks for the discovery of the icw
Beautiful weather for December! Doesn’t get better than that. So peaceful ⛵️☀️take care 😎
Another beautiful and peaceful video of my home state... love the area you were going through. Fair winds!
Glad you enjoyed it
So wonderful to have the safety (and beauty) of the ICW. I remember poor Delos battling their way south outside of the ICW in some really nasty weather.
Grace and Bill, thanks for the beautiful video in your journey through the ICW. Inspiring and awesome!!!
Our pleasure!
That was great, but have you seen this yet? ua-cam.com/video/uUks5X96e2g/v-deo.html
Nice Mugs! ;) Miss you guys
Thanks Cam :) 😉 Miss u guys SO much 😘😘
Awesome video..❤️
Thank you! Cheers!
Grace and Bill, this was your best production so far, as you are really getting a feel for the tempo and pacing of progressively artistic videos. The visuals are stunning, and the music and silence were well balanced/blended. It brought us all deep into those intimate points of natural beauty. Well done!
Glad you enjoyed it! Very nice feedback we greatly appreciate it!
That was great, but have you seen this yet? ua-cam.com/video/uUks5X96e2g/v-deo.html
Nice view!
Kay and I really enjoyed this episode! It reminded us of our trip south on our smaller sailboat several years ago. I like the park that you found, and I hope we find it when we go back north to visit.
Glad you enjoyed it! Message us when ya need info, we have most of our anchorages saved on Navionics 😎
Such a peaceful episode wow ....
Wonderful episode well done ❤️⛵️❤️
Thanks for another great video. Quality keeps getting better and I look forward to viewing them.
Thank you very much!
I live in the section up in Virginia that is in between the split. One end of my road has a ramp to the Dismal Swamp Canal (near the feeder ditch) and the other end of my road has a ramp to the NW River system that comes out to the other/main part of the ICW.
I have seen TONs of bears here on my homestead. They have left my animals alone... one thought about going after my bees. I added strong electric to the whole property after that and have not seen any bears cross the fence line anymore.
FYI, bears don't hibernate here.
I use to live in Elizabeth City and I know I should be hush-hush about this, but there is some of the most incredible pan fishing in the country down there around the Little Alligator and the creeks and canals around there. There's some awesome fishing in the river systems on the north side of the Albemarle, if you get just a little off the beaten path, and there's some outstanding bass fishing too. That area you showed early in the video, the very skinny headwaters of the Alligators River, has some of the most amazing fishing for Huge bluegill, perch, crappie, almost everything else you can catch and even has some nice largemouths.
Wow that is fascinating but I definitely believe it because the area to me felt so full of wildlife and very untouched. I (Grace) was always amazed passing through there how beautiful it is and how full of birds and other wildlife. Its definitely a hidden gem! Thanks for following our journey Tammy and watching our older videos, you rock!!
Live in Ga and yes the ICW can be challenging,but isn't that's what it's all about?
So beautiful, peaceful and hardly any traffic.Y'all should give it a try.
Maybe next time! Although I think we are Panama bound this season!
That is a beautiful area no wonder why you like it
It was really inspiring, lots of fun to film 😍
Thank you for your videos on the ICW, I never knew there was so much to offer and thought it was just a boring way to travel down the coast!
Glad it was helpful! We really enjoyed our experience in the ICW this year!
Keep up the good work !!!!!
Thanks, will do!
What a beautiful video, thank you. For some reason It's made me want to go outside and check up on my honeybees.
Thanks for that! Check on the bees, thats interesting!
I must say you take very good video. beautiful trip. things i'll never get to do
Aw thank u so much!!!!
Founder's all day IPA? one of my favorites! Great episode as usual.
Great beer right?! Will be hard to come by now that we are in Mexico in real time!
That boat ramp area looks a lot like backwaters in florida!!! I love those areas!!! I was born and raised in Florida near swamps soooo it looks a lot like home!!!!!
So cool!
Wished I had known that you were there in December I was just there then I would have loved to met you guys nc is my back yard 😆
Dang too bad!! That would have been fun!
That was great, but have you seen this yet? ua-cam.com/video/uUks5X96e2g/v-deo.html
Great video, focusing on the journey, all the better with your gentle style.
Much appreciated!
I live in Newport News just across the river from the ICW. I plan to take advantage of the ICW when I go north to Rhode Island to visit family, and south to escape the winter weather starting some time in 2025.
Awesome!!! We have fond memories of our time transiting the ICW, especially along the NC coast. Some cool off the beaten path places
Do consider the South Carolina/Georgia section of the ICW sometime - equally gorgeous! We had black bear cubs cross the Dismal Swamp canal right in front of us - awesome.
Woah!!! I wish we saw that!! We never tried the dismal swamp Canal. We are headed south, likely no more time in the icw for us 😀
Amen! Offshore for SC & GA! 🙌🏼
Kayaking in the Alligator River NWR a couple years ago we surprised a black bear. (S)he ambled off, not seemingly too alarmed. Made our day, I can tell you! Oh, and just FYI, the bears of eastern North Carolina don't hibernate.
SO COOL 😬
Hey Bill & Grace, back in the 80's I was stationed in Coast Guard at Station Hobucken which you pass on the ICW. Many years later I prepare my own boat to transit these same waters. Great episode Grace,
That’s so interesting! Congratulations!!!
All your clothes that have labels should be your logo....you could have embroidery patches made cheap per piece and sell on your site plus u can put your patch over other brand names unless they sponsor or support your channel. You guys are already on your way to being a big player as a sailing channel no more free rides by North Face Etc sponsorship is huge business so jealous SV Delos has got their A game going on this sort of thing.......that is my plan learning all these tricks of the trade from you guys who have the experience and wisdom... Thanks again for sharing your Adventures!!!!
Oh my, that was the best intro to the ICW / wilderness. All we've seen is mega homes on cruises from Marina Bay in FL in the late 70's thanks to Intel for picking up the tab on a vintage luxo yacht. Al was one of the earliest Intel field engineers helping to sell product, actually number 7. EONs ago. Wonderful video guys... ❤️❗️
Cruising on OPM, other people's money, is the best !
Cool! that sounds like a cool experience! Thanks for watching and hope to chat more over on patreon😎. We are due to do a patron happy hour on zoom once we get our internet sorted here in Mexico!
The east cost boating is this....#1 Oct Annapolis Boat Show ends, head south. #2 Nov Thanksgiving in Florida at the many cruiser gatherings. #3 winter between Florida and Bahamas. #4. MAY is the month to head north. #5 Arrive back in Chesapeake Bay June 1. Spend June in Chesapeake. #6. July 1 head for New England and Maine. #7 Summer Block island to Acadia Maine. #8 leave Maine end of Aug, get back to safety of Chesapeake Bay End of Sept. #9 Fall in Chesapeake Bay and here comes the Annapolis Bit Show again....NOW....THIS....is how you run the ICW and USA east coast. We have done this ten times south, ten times north. ....FYI.....you stayed tooooooo long in Maine and it made your south run crazy!!!!
Good advice. How do I bookmark this lol
hahah yep! We tend to overstay and wind up with challenging runs south!
@@CalicoSkiesSailing I saw that....brrrrrrrrrr. Hey, you made it, so good job :-)
@@JeremyWilliamsTx Copy it and send it to yourself as an email. then you got it.
Grace and Bill: Great work as always. Brings back some great memories of our trip down the East Coast and back. We chose to go through Georgia on the ICW. Some depth issues but very beautiful. Some nice spots to visit along the way as well. We did it twice. By the way, something we learned after making the same mistake many times, it is called the intracoastal waterway, not intercoastal. I think we used the wrong word on camera a hundred times before someone pointed it out. Keep up the great work.
Thanks! I bet GA would be nice, we were so behind again this year 😂. Yea wee have been saying INTER coastal LOL, live ya learn.
Wouldn’t be great if there was an inter coastal waterway!
😂
👍 Beautiful video!!!!
Eagles are such a big bird, until the perch. BTW, Alligator Steaks are very tasty, and I'm sure they think of me the same 😯
Thank you!!!!
Ha!
Your content and production values continue to raise the bar. I love the chill vibe of this one. Fair winds and following seas. Edit: How's that for contemporary verbiage from a boomer?
Much appreciated! Ha, love the hip verbiage 😎😉
as a farmer i am always curious of what crops are being grown. i couldn't tell what was in the fields because it was harvested. The machinery wasn't nearby. maybe just grass for cattle hay?? did you notice? the isolated parts reminded me of the yukon in canada. you would have seen game for sure . i never noticed any bugs . the freezing weather helped with that. enjoyed it. thanks from seattle
you know, we aren't sure! Didn't really see what they were growing, maybe it was the offseason due to the cold. Didn't see too much livestock, interesting question!
Beautiful part of the world that’s totally off the tourist trail.
The icw literally runs though all the tourist locations of the east coast states lol
Favorite scene was exploring the little inlet to the boat ramp .... that's exploring! Anyone getting rid of a sailboat that needs repair in Northeast - INSPIRED?!?!
Cool spot right?!
Have seen deer swim across, never bears. Saw a nest of owls on to of one of the channel markers. The ICW is indeed a beautiful place, until you run out of water.
Wow, owls would have been cool! Water is tricky, we didn't want to run the water maker with all those tanins, we only ran it when we got close to the ocean and the water cleared up!
@@CalicoSkiesSailing We were surprised by the owls, never thinking we would see baby little puff balls that were nested on a channel marker, worried that their first flight had to be successful and wondering why Mom had built the nest there. If you went down through the Dismal Swamp you might have been told that years ago the sailing ships that visited Portsmouth Va. would fill their stores with the tannin infused water from the swamp, did not mold over. No worry about chemicals back then. Still no thanks!
👍👍👍
Hopefully doing that same thing come November
We have run the ICW 10 times south, 10 times north....never in Dec! Brrrrr looks really good!!!!!
Diesel heater for the win! 😂
You could get a stationary bike hooked to a propeller overboard, to get a constant cardio while traveling.
😂
Was that the Frying Pan of the Aligator you all were moored at and exploring? I use to bass fish those waterays during the sixties thru the nineties.
TICKS! Watch out for ticks!
tanin rich water is basically a chai Tea its the dye from the rotten leaves
Dudleys marina, thats in my home county 🤙
beautiful part of the world!
👍👍❤️😷
Very nice music. It would be great if you could list the artists in the credits.
Thanks
I think ICW stands for Intracoastal not intercoastal. Common new yorker’s mistake! See a lot of wild boar there, not bears.also, prob. Seeing Osprey, and perhaps bald eagles. It’s byooford.
hahaha yea we reallized after that is it intra LOL
Love this. Whats average depth? Any issues with a 5.5 draft?
Not too bad, prob 8-9 feet, I dont think 5.5 would be too bad!
No you should be fine the whole way!!! They try to keep it all dredged but I've heard 6 foot is the standard!
Did you stop in Belhaven or Oriental (great sailor towns)?
We missed those unfortunately!!
Hi Grace, two questions, when you say 65 feet, I am guessing that would mean 65 feet above the waterline? and what is the average tidal range in the NC section of the ICW?
yep its 65 at the waterline..so you need to know the boat mast height over the water. You know can't remember the tidal range, don't think it was much more than a couple feet. Our mast is 55' and all the bridges are 65' so we didn't think about it too much. The tidal currrent's would switch around quite a bit as the water was moving toward different ocean inlets
@@CalicoSkiesSailing thx Grace.
A little human relationship issue I've wondered about.
Have you ever run into other cruisers who are maybe a little obnoxious or you otherwise just don't care for and
they won't leave you alone, maybe even to the point of following you from one anchorage to another?
How would/did you handle a situation like that?
We've been very lucky to have great buddy boats and haven't experience an issue like that. In fact we wish we would meet more people LOL. We tend to linger and often are behind the cruising masses. Not many sailboats in the ICW mid December 😂
Sailor are like herding cats, I bet you could shake an annoying boater if needed 😂
Closing in on 10k subs - ......
Getting close! 🤘
Bears in the deep south do not hibernate 🙂
😂
Great video, love the series and binge watch, but just a noter< bears do NOT hibernate, many reptiles do as also groundhogs, etc bears though go into a deep sleep, difference is a hibernating animal can NOT be woke, a deep sleeper can, hibernating animals go down to a body temp often of 42 degrees and one heartbeat per minute and actually can pull nutrition from the tissue under skin, long story short bears are just in a winter deep sleep.
Thanks for the info!
Is it ICW or is it Icy W 😆😆😆🥶
Ha!
You should do a little research about black bears, they don't actually hibernate. What they do is a type of hibernation the name of which I have forgotten, where they will rest for a week or two at a time then wake up and go scavenging for food for a week or two before going back to resting. So it doesn't matter if there is 6 ft of snow on the ground, there's still a chance you will encounter a black bear.
was waren das für Delphine?
not sure! Lots in that area!
actually the color of the water is good far another reason...It is like the plant life bleeds a positive charge into the water, I would call it life force, but that sounds corny...lol any way running your engine sort of gets an energy transfer from the water, sort of a greeting card from the plant life...gee, that sounds corny too. There is a mathematical formula for it...lol
Ha! Exactly!
If anybody can a Peli-can
😂
... aahhh ... WRONG !!! The ICW has sections on Long Island ... and the Cape Cod Canal is part of the ICW ... (Grew up in NJ on the ICW, boated in Conn ... Mass and Long Island ... and then I moved over to the Chesapeake Bay ...) Though I got to admit the ICW in NJ is a narrow, shallow, winding thing ... especially south of AC ...
Yep, thats why we said unofficial LOL. Mile 0 is in Norfolk but the ICW snakes its way in varying forms through the east coast and the gulf
What? Don't denigrate the bears. They are wonderful creatures and only trying to exist without being hassled. In Canada, we take at as a treat to see them in the wild.
We would have loved to see a bear!
Big head video. LOL
Lol that what happens when we use the fancy camera. Can’t zoom out as much 😂
A thing to keep in mind about our black bears here in the South is that they rarely ever hibernate. Even in Virginia, it almost never gets cold enough long enough for them to hibernate- and of course the more south you go the warmer it is. So if you're out in the woods in late winter, don't make the mistake of thinking the food you're cooking won't attract a hungry bear!
Good call!! That would be a mess 😂
Intra, not “inter” ICW
Ha you are right! Don't know how we missed that 😂
Intra-Coastal. NOT INTER-Coastal.
You feel good now?
Grace , you always sound like my grandmother, but now you look like her with the oversized sunglasses. Get a talent coach please !
😂