A lovely article from Coastal Living about waters that ICW cruisers do not often see.
Click here for The Ultimate Boat Trip Through South Carolina’s Undiscovered Lowcountry
Coastal Living
This excellent report comes from Robert Sherer’s Facebook page, Bob423. Thank you Robert! See also Pomeranz Report on dredging in Dawho River from October of 2018.
Many of you have used my GPX routes as an aid in passing through many of the shallow areas of the ICW. The number of individual routes proliferated when Aqua Map added USACE Survey maps to their Master upgrade which allowed me to form a route based on their recent depth surveys.
Using the previously unavailable USACE data, I’ve formed new GPX routes for Ft Matanzas, Buttermilk and Altamaha Sound, Little Mud River, Hell Gate, Ashepoo-Coos…
This is good news for all Waterway users!
NORFOLK, Va. – Norfolk District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a five-year services contract to U.S. Facilities Inc. for operations and maintenance of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway’s locks and bridges.
Click here for USACE awards $3.8 million services contract for Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway
DIVDS
In the past, boating groups and the marine industry have railed against adding more ethanol to marine fuel. Newer engines can now cope with E10 but not E15. Older gasoline engines must still search for non-ethanol fuels which are available at almost all gas stations in South Carolina; but for how long? Remember the old “leaded” versus “non-leaded” fuels?
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These are devices you hope to never need, but their presence on your boat could save your life!
406 Day: National Campaign for Awareness of Emergency Locator Beacon Importance
NEW ORLEANS – Saturday, April 6, is 406 Day, a national campaign run by NOAA to spread awareness of the importance of emergency position indicating radio beacons, or EPIRBS, and personal locator beacons, or PLBs, in boating safety.
In 2018, the Eighth Coast Guard District responded to over 200 distress signals from EPIRBS aboard aircraft and boats.
An EPIRB works by transmitting a signal that is picked up by a satellite and then relayed to a rescue coordination center.
Beacon registration is free, easy, and required by law. Federal law requires all EPIRBs be registered in the NOAA SARSAT Beacon Registration Database, which is free to all beacon owners.
When beacon owner information changes, it should be updated online at www.beaconregistration.noaa.
Owners are required to validate their beacon information every two years to ensure their contact information is up-to-date. Current beacon owner information allows search and rescue responders to work more efficiently and can decrease response time during distress situations.
If your EPIRB is accidentally activated, contact the U.S. Coast Guard at 1-855-406-USCG (8724) and provide them with the beacon’s ID to cancel the false alert.
Search and rescue personnel begin responding immediately to every activation of a distress beacon. Cancellation of false alerts helps protect SAR personnel who would be utilized during an actual emergency, and ensures valuable resources are available to respond to actual distress cases.
“The Eighth Coast Guard District covers roughly half of the Gulf of Mexico and receives over 200 EPIRB alerts a year,” said Kevin Robb, a SAR specialist at the Eighth Coast Guard District. “Approximately 97% of these alerts are false alerts, including accidental activations and bracket failures. Our sole focus is your safety on the water. Keeping your EPIRB registration information accurate helps us to better respond to your situation, and in turn prevents us from unduly hazarding our first responders and wasting resources at taxpayer expense. Be safe and register your EPIRBs and PLBs and keep the registration information current!”
-USCG-
Cruisers Net is proud to be a member of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway Association whose lobbying work is crucial to keeping the Waterway navigable. Your membership dollars directly impact their vital work. Please join and encourage your boating neighbors to do likewise, regardless of their homeport.
Greetings from the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway Association (AIWA). This year is going to be very busy for the AIWA in every state along the waterway and we rely heavily on the support of our members. Below is a list of some of our major accomplishments from 2018 and early efforts this year.
• Worked with Congress and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to increase funding for the dredging of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (AIWW). For federal Fiscal Year 2019 (FY19), which started in October 2018, we received a total of $23.944 million. This is the highest non-disaster amount we have received in years and is in addition to over $40 million in FY18. As of this letter, maintenance dredging projects are underway in all five
states along the AIWW.
• In early March, our Board of Directors met with twelve Congressional Offices in Washington, D.C. to request funding for additional dredging needs for FY20 and they were supportive of our efforts. We also met with staff at Headquarters of the Corps during the visit to highlight the importance of the AIWW. From our advocacy efforts, we were able to secure support from Congressional offices in six states (FL, GA, SC, NC, VA and NJ) to join a multi-state, bipartisan delegation letter asking for a total of $180 million in additional funding for dredging projects that could include the AIWW. We don’t yet know how much more money will be included by Congress, but this is
a major step forward in highlighting the AIWW as a project with national significance due to its interconnectivity along the eastern seaboard of the U.S.
• We presented our annual meeting to bring decision-makers and stakeholders together to discuss issues impacting the AIWW. Our annual meeting was held on November 15-16, 2018 in Charleston, South Carolina. Some of the topics included: State of the Waterway and ongoing maintenance efforts after Hurricanes, Engineering with Nature and beneficial use of dredge materials including a pilot project in Georgia, commercial and industrial waterway access, and dredge material management challenges and opportunities. We were also joined by Mayor John Tecklenburg, City of Charleston, Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Palazzini, Charleston District Commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Captain John Reed, 5A Market Street Beaufort, SC 29906 (843) 379-1151, Charleston Sector Commander for the U.S. Coast Guard, Kyle Ward of NOAA, and Fran Bohnsack of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration in addition to many other stakeholder groups.
• We are working with non-federal partners to establish non-federal funding for the dredging of the AIWW. Florida and North Carolina have established non-federal funding programs and we are raising awareness of the benefits of providing non-federal funding in South Carolina and Georgia. This will be critical in the long-term maintenance of Marine Highway 95.
• We participated in regional and national coalitions to increase awareness of AIWW issues. We are an active board member and on the Executive Committee of the National Waterways Conference, Inc., and partner with numerous other national organizations. In 2018, we were presenters at the Local Government Meeting of NCBIWA, America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association Rendezvous, and the American Boating Congress in Washington, D.C. We also participated in the National Dredging Meeting, Western Dredging Association Meeting, and were invited to participate in the U.S. Army Corps’ of Engineers Engineering with Nature initiative due to our work on the Jekyll Creek Pilot Project. This March, we gave a presentation at the Marine Trades Association of New Jersey 2019 Conference to build support in the northeastern U.S.
• We continue outreach with other federal agencies such as the Maritime Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation, NOAA, and the U.S. Coast Guard to support many efforts including the Marine Highways program and chart mapping efforts, especially in areas where maintenance dredging is needed.
• We publish monthly newsletters of our efforts and distribute to our members. We hope you saw the March 2019 issue, and it can be accessed from the News section on our website at https://atlanticintracoastal.org/news/.
As you can see, we had a fruitful 2018 and we have hit the ground running in 2019. We hope that we can
continue to be the Voice of the Waterway in 2019 and beyond.
Respectfully,
Brad Pickel
Executive Director
If you have AIS equipment aboard, please respond to this USCG request for survey input.
Good Afternoon Everyone,
USCG Navigation Center (NAVCEN) created a survey to better understand the use of AIS-ATON during major storms of 2018 (Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Michael, etc). In order to generate a more robust response, the NAVCEN request your participation with this survey by April 19, 2019. Please feel free to distribute as necessary. The survey can be located from the following url;
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r
Please direct any questions to the NAVCEN Waterways Division POCs:
– LT Marcus Fair (703-313-5998)
– CWO Wayne Horn (703-313-5815)
Thanks for your time.
Redfish Pass, between Captiva and North Captiva Islands, has always been an issue for deep keel cruisers due to shoaling and off-station markers. See Clarification, Channel and Detailed Notes.
I tried to leave out of Captiva this morning and could not get out. Grounded left, right and center with 6ft keel at high tide. Where the charts say 20 it’s 12. Where they say 12 it’s as low as 6.
James Bostick
Click Here To Open A Chart View Window, Zoomed To the Location of Redfish Pass
SC DOT says there’s nothing to be concerned about when it comes to the integrity of the structure of the bridge. Let’s hope that is true. Falling concrete would be devastating to a vessel and crew, especially from 65ft! Nixons Crossroads Bridge, aka Little River/Hwy 17 Bridge, is a fixed span with a 65ft vertical clearance just north of the Little River Swing Bridge in Myrtle Beach, SC.
Click here for SCDOT weighs in on concrete falling from Hwy 17 bridge
by Elizabeth Thomas, wpde.com/news
Click Here To View the South Carolina Cruisers Net Bridge Directory Listing For Little River Bridge
Click Here To Open A Chart View Window, Zoomed To the Location of Little River Bridge
In this Facebook posting on Bob423, Tom Hale describes his recent St Andrew Sound passage. St Andrew Sound can kick up nasty conditions in the shallows of the Waterway’s magenta line east around infamous Marker 32. Alternative routes have been explored and suggested as long as I can remember. See Robert Sherer’s alternate route for more on this often challenging sound.
Comments from Cruisers (1)
Tried to read the story about Wadmalaw Island and local environ of Edison River Low Country.
Pop up link to Coastal living subscription made the article unreadable .
The “Low Country” is a remarkable place. My wife and I have traveled the area by car, camped in the state parks, and cruised the ICW numerous times, venturing off the beaten path to anchor up the tidal creeks and backwaters
Every skipper should take the time to visit this region and expand the horizon to all of the salt marsh / tannic waters from the Waccamaw to the St.Johns.
Each trip is a different experience. Our approach to cruising is to enjoy the journey without running a marathon to the destination.
Steve Kamp
S/V Carolina, a Hunter 38
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