Cruising Guides and Information

Here's a big thank-you and recommendation for the cruising information put out by Managing The Waterway / On The Water Chartguides. These are developed, published and updated by Captains Mark & Diana Doyle (who made presentations to our Northern Lights Sailing Club a few years ago).  

We can't thank them enough for the information we really needed to make this trip:

1. Managing The Waterway – IntraCoastal Waterway cruising guide. We use this every day. Easy to follow, easy to find info we need quickly, really complete.  Well worth the price.

2. Anchor Guides – their new Anchor Guides for the ICW provided us with information to pick out, use (and survive, or avoid) several shallow (and deep) ICW anchorages.  One night at anchor instead of at a marina paid for the books!

3. E-mail alerts.  Since we bought and registered our chartbooks, we receive e-mail alerts about important updates that we need to know about. Things like bridge closings, and especially warnings about new or changed danger areas because of shoaling (some of it shifted by Hurricane Sandy?). 

4. Camp Dowry Creek Seminars – while trapped for almost a week at the Dowry Creek Marina near Belhaven, NC, waiting out Hurricane Sandy:  Besides being held hostage along with about 30 other boats, we enjoyed swapping sailing and cruising information with the other boats. And, Mark Doyle ran a series of impromptu discussions about navigating south on the ICW (if and when we got out of there).  Imagine 4 days of information coming at us by the ICW full-timers who know the most about it – and FREE (excepting marina dockage fees).  Punch line: Their information on how to get through the worst trouble-spots helped (or enabled) us to make it through places like Fields Cut, Little Mud River, and Jekyll Creek without even hitting bottom ("shoaly-hit!").  Advice on timing the tides and which nav aids to follow – or avoid – was great.  I wish they would put on these seminars again – we lucked out in getting all this info at one time, while not being able to go anywhere anyway. Something good did come out of Hurricane Sandy - for us.