ICW with 7 1/2 Foot Keel - Piece of Cake

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by Jason Flare

I was wondering, Carsten, if your speed slowed down a few times as your keel dragged through the soft mud.

And no, dragging through the mud would not be considered a grounding in my book.

We can't do the NJ ICW because we ahve a 60 foot mast and there are lots of bridges that are much lower than that so it is out.

Did we slow down? I think we probably did a couple of times although we didn't notice it too much

[birdsey]

Does ANYBODY know how to enter the Pamlico Sound and Nuese River with a 7' draft? It looks like maybe Hatteras inlet?? I am looking at a sailboat with a 7'8" draft and don't know if I can get it into Oriental or not.

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by birdsey

Does ANYBODY know how to enter the Pamlico Sound and Nuese River with a 7' draft? It looks like maybe Hatteras inlet?? I am looking at a sailboat with a 7'8" draft and don't know if I can get it into Oriental or not.

You should be able to get in at beaufort/Morehead City - big ships come in there.

NOt sure about Oriental though - we scraped bottom at the municipal face dock - despite them saying it ahd been dredged. When I say scraped - we pushed our way through the silt.

[svfinlandia]

Originally Posted by carstenb

well we ran from Charleston SC to Wilmington - 265 ST. miles and we'll do the rest to Norfolk in about a week.

Most have said that the section we just ran is the worst - time will tell. But so far we just haven't seen any problems

Good luck to you. I have a 6' draft and I always go outside from Beaufort, NC to Masonboro inlet. Partly because of the shallows and partly because of the many bridges.
You have NOT been through the worst part of the ICW. GA and SC and north FL down to Jacksonville are the shallowest in my experience. I would bet that even at high tide you would not make it behind Jekyll Island without at least soft grounding. You should though have a pretty easy trip past Beaufort and Morehead City, NC.

Al, S/V Finlandia

[sailorboy1]

Last Fall I came south on the ICW from Norfolk to Wilmington with 6'4" draft. Bumped twice and both times I was out of the channel, though one of those the channel was only 10' wide due to shoaling. The interesting thing I found was that I kept meeting up with boaters we met in the beginning and the ones that had been towed numerous times were the ones with the 5' draft. Maybe the reason the shallow draft boats have problems is that they aren't cautious enough!

I went outside from Wilmington to St Augustine as I got tired of the whole driving n a ditch thing. Then the ICW from there to Fort Pierce. Finally went aground and got stuck at Pounce De Leon and had to wait for the tide

[AJ_n_Audrey]

Fyi on going outside in the Southeast: the soundings in the lesser used inlets can be off by a lot. I went in south of Sapelo Island at about half tide, and the chart soundings were wrong by at least five feet.

But I agree with others who have said going outside is a better way to go generally, weather permitting, and for anyone with 5+ foot draft is basically mandatory in GA. SC between McClellanville and Charleston can be bad also.

[Seabeau]

Originally Posted by AJ_n_Audrey

Fyi on going outside in the Southeast: the soundings in the lesser used inlets can be off by a lot. I went in south of Sapelo Island at about half tide, and the chart soundings were wrong by at least five feet.

But I agree with others who have said going outside is a better way to go generally, weather permitting, and for anyone with 5+ foot draft is basically mandatory in GA. SC between McClellanville and Charleston can be bad also.

Tropical Storm Herminie and Hurricane Mathew both moved a tremendous amount of bottom material throughout the North FL. and GA. coast, in addition to both moving and removing buoys and channel markers.

[decktapper]

Originally Posted by AJ_n_Audrey

Fyi on going outside in the Southeast: the soundings in the lesser used inlets can be off by a lot. I went in south of Sapelo Island at about half tide, and the chart soundings were wrong by at least five feet.

Yes the soundings can be off. It has been 8 years since we went from VA to Miami FL in the ditch, and we drew only 6 feet. The worst soundings we saw was in an anchorage, my charts and chart plotter both said there was a 30 foot of water, but we ran hard aground.

To the OP Good Job.