Each day, the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) community of cruisers sit on our decks along the docks and get to know today’s set of neighbors, knowing that tomorrow we will have a different set of neighbors. We’ll meet each of them again, somewhere along the waterway. There’s a whole community of people moving up and down the East Coast every autumn and every spring: we love boating and welcome other boaters with open arms. We love hearing other’s ICW adventure stories and sharing our own.

A section of the ICW in North Carolina. Photo courtesy of Facebook

On our happy little boat, In No Hurry, we dropped our anchor for an overnight in Boca Raton, FL. There were a couple of other boats in the anchorage, and we all waved to each other, feeling the same unspoken sense of community and kinship. The next day, after a good day’s cruise, we tucked into a mooring field with lots of other travelers. A gentleman came by on a dinghy, paused and asked, “You folks were in Boca last night?” He recognized us and asked about our day and our cruise. He had pulled up his anchor and left earlier than we did, but many of us have similar style boats and go about the same speed. We caught up with him and happened to pull into the same stopping place for the next night. We swapped stories and boat cards and spent some time chatting.

Travelers on the waterway all seem to have boat cards. The suggestion we received early in our experience was to put a picture of ourselves and our boat on either side of the card, as there will be people who will make their mental connection to you both ways. When planning to pass through Beaufort, SC, the hometown of some people we had spent a week slipped next to and swapped cards with, we called them. They welcomed us with open arms, picked us up from the dock, brought us home for a barbeque, and offered friendship as if we were buddies from way back.

We have collected a Rolodex-sized pile of cards from members of our community, and we would offer the same companionship if they called us anytime. After our night in the mooring field, the gentleman in the dinghy was off early, but we anticipated catching up to his wife and him again that evening. We got underway a little later and as expected, when we were ready to pull in for the night, they were already there. This was one of the multiple free overnight docks along the ICW, so we made the short stroll to town for cocktails and dinner, appreciating the opportunity to stretch our legs, as well as get to know our new moving neighbors. Another boater joined us, too, and we found he was the owner of the Facebook page, Sailing and Cruising: a great site for tons of good information and familiarity with actually being underway. This man has a lot of good experience, and we all wanted to pick his brain.

There seem to be endless resources for navigating the ICW, both paper and electronic. The captain of our fine vessel works better with paper resources, while I, first mate, work better with electronic information. (For the sake of redundancy, make sure you have both paper and electronic available.) We have a navigation guidebook put out by a couple who have traveled quite a bit. There are plenty of other books available. Facebook has multiple pages with wide ranging information. The Waterway Guide is available on the internet. Active Captain is another resource many of us use.

A valuable means of choosing your resources is to listen to fellow boaters. They’ll not just talk about what’s good or bad, they’ll discuss why they like this resource or that one. We each need to listen to what others have to say, take it all in, and then make our own decisions.

A few days later, at another free dock with room for five or six boats we’d pulled into, again with the folks from Boca, an impromptu dock party developed at the end of the day. A few neighbors brought out chairs. Everybody brought cocktails and gathered on the dock. We were all aboard trawlers and sailboats cruising north for the summer. Boaters’ discussion topics seem to fall along the lines of destinations we’ve been to, others we would like to visit, and our boats. In our time on the ICW, we’ve met a lot of other boaters doing similar journeys; they are traveling everything from a portion of the ICW to voyagers doing the whole Great Loop. There are people just starting out on their journey and people who have done so much they’re looking for their next adventure. The one thing we all have in common is loving our lives on boats and traveling.

Travelers make fast friends along the ICW.

When it was time for our weekly marina visit, one of our new cruising family recommended a good one: Brunswick Landing Marina. We took the recommendation and found that they were right. The marina offered a free beer and wine happy hour in the clubhouse and great deals on the other facilities, so we all met up again and compared notes on the day’s cruise and next day’s ride. 

This spring’s journey north has been in some great company. Among the members of this happy band were some folks just starting out on their trip around the Great Loop. They followed us through the difficult waters of Georgia and South Carolina. We’ve been honored to offer what little experience we have with them. They report appreciating cruising with someone who’s done this before. In a few days, our journeys will diverge. They’ll go on, and we have to pause for a few days. Cruisers try to keep in touch, however loosely. We may not see a “neighbor” for a year or two, but then, we’ll pull into a marina or anchorage and say “Isn’t that so-and-so” and end up having sunset cocktails together. The group, bonded by our common journey and the trials and joys of doing it, travels together each spring and each autumn. We all stay longer in some places or meet new folks along the way, but no matter the cruisers in attendance on any given evening, we’re all community.

By Elizabeth Kelch