icw guide

heading south in october. anyone have a recommendation for a good intracoastal state by state guide book for ny to florida? thanks.

If you're looking for a book for navigation and Anchorage proposes, you will be better off getting more up to date information from online sources such as Active Captain and Waterway guides websites.

Ted

O C Diver said:

If you're looking for a book for navigation and Anchorage proposes, you will be better off getting more up to date information from online sources such as Active Captain and Waterway guides websites.

Ted

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Paper cruising guides have just about gone away. Some classics like the Chesapeake magazine's guide or Rintraub's Maine guide are still useful for local non boating info. And the Waterway published guides gives you a lot of info in one place.

But generally I use Active Captain. I sure wish they would get it back to its former functionality though.

David

I use the online Waterway Guide. However I also have the large Maptech charts by my helm at all times and track where I am. The guides only have small charts of the areas of interest, not in between.

Waterway Guide

The Waterway Guide Atlantic ICW book is a great companion and in many ways more convenient when underway than on-line resources. Ditto Chesapeake Magazine's book.
If you need something to get you to the Chesapeake, then the WG Northern guide is in order. The books are great for getting a flavor of what's around you, towns, etc. If you read through those, then you can come to forums like this for opinions and in many cases good recent local knowledge.

I also ditto the chartbooks. Looks like the Kettlewell ICW chartbooks, which were Ann's favorite tool, haven't been updated in a long time.

When we brought our boat down from Rhode Island to southwest Florida last fall we relied on Active Captain the most, WaterWay guide second, and the great book of anchorages third.

I thought the WaterWay guide was great for bridges and locks.

+3 on Waterway Guide. Lots of info
John

Moved thread from "Mainship" to "Cruising and Events - East Coast"

On our AICW trip from Annapolis to Marco Island, FL, we relied on: 1) the Active Captain overlay on Garmin Bluechart Mobile,
2) Our Raymarine Chart plotter, and 3) An AICW chart book of smallish pages, spiral bound.

Unfortunately, Garmin has discontinued their Bluechart Mobile app. I suppose that they wanted to eliminate a low-cost alternative to their full MFD's. I'm currently looking for a good substitute, but it must be Active Captain capable.

Bob423, who is also on the staff of the waterway guide as the ICW expert, has published an ICW guide available on Amazon. My wife and I have found that this in conjunction with ActiveCaptain is the most useful guide we have yet found on our numerous trips up and down the ICW. Bob is also One of the most frequent and accurate posters on ActiveCaptain for the ICW portion. If you go to his website you can find routes through some of the most shallow areas and download them to your chart plotter. If you do this you need only follow the route he has posted to get through. Bob lives in Poughkeepsie and can guide you all the way to the Keys.

I use the Waterway Guide online. However for the current trip I started using a guide the PO left on board. I really love the mile by mile narrative in this guide as well as the overviews. Whereas the Waterway Guide only covers major stops and inlets, this covers the whole thing.

This copy is dated so will probably be an upcoming birthday or Christmas list item!

I like the Waterway Guide, but the first of my 30 plus trips north and south started before the internet was available. I like to be able to read the book in advance, like the night before or the week before to refresh my memory of the trouble spots. (like at every place on the ICW where the ocean meets the waterway!)
I also keep my paper charts at the helm with written notes about bridge heights (in letters big enough to read easily, and the bridge opening restrictions on the chart rather than in a book. I also mark known shallow spots and no wake zones on the paper charts. I will use a moveable pointer on the chart such as dividers or a screwdriver etc., to mark my progress every so often so I can see where I am. I often have the GPS range in close so the paper chart gives me more of an overall view.

I have found the Skipper Bob guides to be pretty useful. Whatever you get, these people are great to deal with... www.bluewaterweb.com

yachtbrokerguy said:

I will use a moveable pointer on the chart such as dividers or a screwdriver etc., to mark my progress every so often so I can see where I am.

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Learned this from an "old salt" during my 1st trip, in 1990, down the AICW, using paper charts:

Use a small piece of masking tape (1" x 1/2"?) marked with a hand-drawn arrow to continuously mark your position on the paper chart. Works like a charm!

rclarke246 said:

On our AICW trip from Annapolis to Marco Island, FL, we relied on: 1) the Active Captain overlay on Garmin Bluechart Mobile,
2) Our Raymarine Chart plotter, and 3) An AICW chart book of smallish pages, spiral bound.

Unfortunately, Garmin has discontinued their Bluechart Mobile app. I suppose that they wanted to eliminate a low-cost alternative to their full MFD's. I'm currently looking for a good substitute, but it must be Active Captain capable.

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Now in our 12th yr. of ICW travel, we almost exclusively use AC. The new AquaMap app is a great replacement for Garmin BCM, I like it better than Garmin, my wife, not so much. But it has all the data. Our SOP is to do all the nav work and boat driving, AP interface from the ship's computer running Coastal Explorer, and the commentary or local information from the iPad, or phone. Phone is a bit tiny, but it's very handy for calling ahead since the phone numbers are right in the data. We also use SSECN for fuel prices and trouble spot updates, since their reports are vetted.



AC is not without faults, but one learns to sift out the meaningless "magenta line" comments, comments warning of shoaling out of the channel, missing markers, and other stuff that's just so much clutter. Many of the new ENC charts no longer show the line.
I concur, paper ICW guidebooks are essentially out of date by the time you get them in you hands. Akin to the newspaper.

The best thing about the magenta line is in spots where it would be easy to miss a turn....as many first timers and even more experienced skipper sometimes do.

Not so much for best water.

Maerin said:

I concur, paper ICW guidebooks are essentially out of date by the time you get them in you hands.

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How so?

Tom.B said:

How so?

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Time from gathering, compiling info, sending to publisher, distribution, sitting on retailer's shelf. How current can it be?

Maerin said:

Time from gathering, compiling info, sending to publisher, distribution, sitting on retailer's shelf. How current can it be?

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How current does it need to be? In regards to the sights, sounds, anchorage, and dockage in and around the coastal towns and attractions along the ICW, very little changes from year to year. At least that is the case in NC. For that matter, other than where the inlets cross the ICW, very little had changed there either. Yes, there are always exceptions (the channels behind Morehead City comes to mind at the moment), however, much of the problem areas have been problem areas for many, many years and are usually mentioned in the guides.



The internet certainly has its place in this discussion for sure, but don't rule out hard publications as a guide option just because it wasn't current yesterday. In fact, I will almost always take the advice from a guide book over 90% of the junk on AC. At least the author(s) and publisher(s) have a great deal of credibility on the line. Selling books is not like operating a website. Some schmuck that can't stay in the middle of a channel and decides to put a warning on AC like he is some sort of expert scares me. As should someone that has a single bad experience at a restaurant decides to trash it on social media as the worst place ever. Current does not always mean correct.

OK. Here's another data point, generally agreeing with the other posters here.

We just completed the northbound trip on the ICW from Florida to Maryland and found that the world of coastwise piloting has changed radically in the past couple of years. I suggest AquaMap and Navionics Sonar Maps on an iPad as the primary charts; AquaMap integrates Active Captain, while Navionics gives detailed depth information beyond what is found on charts -- very useful for anchorages. The charts for both of these are amazingly inexpensive and are updated often.

But as a Prudent Mariner, you do need printed material, too. At some point, your iPad will run out of charge or you'll lose contact with shoreside Internet (probably in North Carolina). The old standby ChartKits are still my favorite for paper charts as backup now that the Kettlewell series is outdated, but the Guides to Cruising Maryland and Virginia Waters are fine for the Chesapeake. Anyway, I just like looking at paper charts. They are comfortingly familiar, somehow.

Among guidebooks, I found Waterway Guide useful for planning the day but kept Chesapeake Bay Magazine's ICW guide at the helm for constant reference because it has detailed piloting information in a mile-by-mile format from Norfolk through Florida. Skipper Bob guides are useful, but they're included in AquaMap if you subscribe to Waterway Guide online (free).

Bob423's book is excellent for trouble spots, but the information is also available free on his blog; the book is essentially a transcription of the blog. Also check the detailed info from Tom Hale on the SAIL magazine site, presuming he does that again this Fall.

Disclosure: I am a long-time writer for SAIL, Waterway Guide and Chesapeake Bay Magazine, largely because I consider them the best.

-- Tom

ralphcramden said:

heading south in october. anyone have a recommendation for a good intracoastal state by state guide book for ny to florida? thanks.

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I would suggest that you look into Bob Scherers book 2018 ICW CRUISING GUIDE. It's available on Amazon at www.amazon.com/2018-ICW-Cruising-Gu...33036959&sr=8-20&keywords=2018+Cruising+Guide

Bob travels from Poukeepsie to Key West and back ever year in his 43 foot slop wuth his wife Ann. You will find Bob's notes all through Active Captain under Bob423. He is also a contributor to Waterway Guide.

Maerin said:

Time from gathering, compiling info, sending to publisher, distribution, sitting on retailer's shelf. How current can it be?

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And that's why the Good Lord commanded the USCG to issue LNMs. I am always a bit bemused how many yachtsmen don't read those religiously... or at all...

I've done the trip about 25 times, albeit the last time was in 2011. Kettlewell and Moeller are my two favorites for mile by mile details but I'd suggest buying every guide you can find for the trip. They will all have useful info and you'll end up using them all. Claiborne Young wrote some excellent books on the ICW, more what to see and do rather than how to do it, but absolutely worth having on board. Skipper Bob's guide to anchorages is good as is the Waterway Guide. Budget a hundred bucks or so and get them all; you won't miss the money and you'll love having all the info to read every night before the next day's leg.

Maerin said:

Time from gathering, compiling info, sending to publisher, distribution, sitting on retailer's shelf. How current can it be?

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Bob's cruising guide also provides electronic updates. Plus, you can always check his blog... www.fleetwing.blogspot.com he posts his updates there real time he cruises South. This year's southerly trip begins around mid September.

tomdove said:

But as a Prudent Mariner, you do need printed material, too. At some point, your iPad will run out of charge or you'll lose contact with shoreside Internet (probably in North Carolina). The old standby ChartKits are still my favorite for paper charts as backup now that the Kettlewell series is outdated, but the Guides to Cruising Maryland and Virginia Waters are fine for the Chesapeake. Anyway, I just like looking at paper charts. They are comfortingly familiar, somehow.

Disclosure: I am a long-time writer for SAIL, Waterway Guide and Chesapeake Bay Magazine, largely because I consider them the best.

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Greetings, Tom. Been reading your stuff for years...

FWIW, we didn't find Internet connectivity to be necessary, or even important, while underway... and never had to result to paper because of that.

OTOH, we also used the printed Waterway Guide etc anyway...

-Chris

But he gives you both... a hard copy with links to updates and real time on his blog... Bob even puts in files that you can load to your GPS with the deepest routes through the tightest spots. The guy has been doing the ICW from the Hudson River to Key West every year for about 10 years now. You wont find more up to date information than from him....he posts updates nightly while enroute.

I suggest avoiding the ICW in S NJ; there are some very shallow stretches eg: behind N Wildwood and S of Ocean City, even at high tide. I run the ocean-side.