[Rhodes22-list] Re: Bud: ICW depth

[Jim White]

Bud:
  The GICWW (Gulf Intra Coastal Waterway) here is less than 100' wide (16' average depth) for over 50 miles....bordered on both sides by water averaging <3' in depth....
   
  Now  THATS narrow and shallow!
   
  jw

Bud <budconnor at earthlink.net> wrote:
  Dave,
the ICW is at least a mile wide here, and is typically deep (8'-12') 
and is a great place to sail anything in
our class. I occasionally crew on a Lindbergh '28 (at times we've had 7 
people on the rail!) and we have no
trouble maneuvering around the course. Take a quick look on mapquest 
and you will see wide water
from Scottsmoor down to Stuart which is over a 100 miles, with Melbourne 
in the middle. You will be
suprised how wide and un-crowded this area is. If you want to see a 
narrow ICW, take a look at Daytona
on mapquest. If I lived in Daytona I would have taken up motorcycles 
instead of sailing. Oh, if you use
GoogleEarth, you can see just how sparsely populated the water really is.

-Bud



DCLewis1 at aol.com wrote:

>Ed, We intend to look @ Hartwell and Keowee. I’m sure Rummy would welcome 
>another Rhodes on his lake. At a minimum, it’s someone else he could beat - 
>easily. Maybe he'd feel better about it if we arrived with a bottle of Mt 
>Gay, or is it jar of Ben Gay?
> 
>Regarding Sen Russell, you’re right, I’d forgotten. Regarding Strom, I’m 
>sure he did work hard for, and represent, his constituents, he was re-elected 
>many times.
> 
>Art, Regarding Lanier, the Corps advertises 7.5M visitors/yr. Wow! 
> 
>Julia, I think you’re right, Hudson and Dunedin have survived on our list. 
> To out knowledge, available marinas in that part of the world are at Tarpon 
>Springs, we checked at Dunedin and Tarpon Springs, I don’t think Hudson is 
>directly on the water. We were told that marinas in the area have been 
>converted to waterfront condos or are wildly oversubscribed because of the 
>conversion of so many other marinas to waterfront condos. As I recall, the guy 
>running the Dunedin marina said it would take at least 2 years for a 22' sailboat 
>to get a slip in their marina - if the boat were 30' or over he projected a 
>4+ year wait - and we’d have to be residents of Dunedin to even be put on the 
>list. There are slips available at Tarpon Springs. One issue with that 
>entire area is the water is shallow water. We were told by a marina operator @ 
>Tarpon Springs that if you sailed a mile off shore, the depth would increase 
>by about a foot - you could walk home if something happened to the boat. 
>The charts show a very extended shelf in that part of the world. The mean 
>depth around Dunedin is about 2 feet, as I recall (could be wrong about the 2', 
>but it’s shallow). So thin water is an issue in that part of Fla - but it is 
>warm, so it’s still on the list.
> 
>BobF, Thanks for your post, I checked back and saw Tom’s subsequent post. 
>It explains everything we saw. But his 2 posts also identify a substantial 
>problem: marina’s are out, at least for the near term, because the Florida 
>EPA won’t let them dredge, ramps are not great, so Tom recommends a waterfront 
>or canal back home. Tom reports they start at about $1.2M - and we all know 
>they can be blown or washed away by the next big storm. Actually, when we 
>were there we saw several canal backed homes that were in the $700Ks, but they 
>were older (I’d guess ‘50s) and pretty small - PG/PC has been around for a 
>while and the part near the water likely developed first. So its getting 
>problematic given PG/PCs storm history, boating infrastructure (or lack of 
>infrastructure), and very near term development.
> 
>I’d thought PG/PC might be a good place for the snowbird trick, just get a 
>condo/townhouse and rent a slip - limit hurricane risk by limiting investment. 
> The problem is no slips, few ramps, and a tremendous amount of development 
>that’s going to exacerbate the need for slips and ramps (as I recall there 
>are at least 3 high rise condos going in on PG Isles in a relatively small area 
>just outside the park entrance no direct water access with any of them - and 
>that’s only one place in PG). I’m starting to think that making PG/PC work 
>could be a challenge. 
> 
>Bud, Thanks for suggesting Melbourne. Can you really sail that part of the 
>ICW? Except as the ICW transects various sounds, the parts of the ICW I’ve 
>seen on the east coast have been relatively narrow. I concluded sailing the 
>ICW entails some sailing and a lot of motoring unless the wind cooperates. I 
>have no experience sailing the ICW, am I wrong?
> 
>Also, I can report that in the Palm Coast area, and possibly other areas ( 
>i.e. Southport NC), developers have negotiated cut-outs from the ICW where they
>’ve built marinas for a hundred or so boats at a site. I can see real 
>traffic jams developing in those areas when the multitude of local recreational 
>boaters take to the relatively confined ICW ditch. Does Melbourne have that 
>problem? I’m ambivalent about recreational sailing in the ICW, as opposed to 
>using it as a passage from point A to point B, do people sail 22' boats 
>recreationally in the ICW (this comment applies only to “the big ditch” part of 
>the ICW not the sounds, river mouths, behind keys, etc)?
>
>Our next trek is pseudo-local, Kilmarnock VA, Washington NC via Edenton (try 
>to check on our boat), and New Bern NC (again). This is our 3rd trip to New 
>Bern, it has a lot going for it (Neuse River & Pamlico Sound), but it can 
>get cold. Not as cold as Northern Va, but a lot colder than Fla. Later this 
> year it’ll be the lakes trek. 
> 
>Thanks again to everyone for your input. Your local knowledge is really 
>helpful. 
> 
>Dave
>
>__________________________________________________
>Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
>
>
> 
>
__________________________________________________
Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list



Jim White
Le Menagerie
www.lemenagerie.blogspot.com
		
---------------------------------
Brings words and photos together (easily) with
 PhotoMail  - it's free and works with Yahoo! Mail.