If you’re a veteran Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) boater, you probably know who Bob423 is and what he does. Even if you’re new to cruising, you might have already heard the name from other cruisers. Often, they tell you that you must have Bob’s tracks to keep from running aground.
This article will discuss precisely what Bob423 does to create his ICW tracks and why they are SOMETIMES a helpful resource.
But let’s cut the hype — people were navigating the ICW successfully before Bob came on the scene, and learning to do it the right way is part of becoming a safe and competent mariner. None of the tools Bob423 uses, nor his techniques, are unique or special.
Who Is Bob423, and What Are Bob’s ICW Tracks?
Bob423 is the screen name of one Robert Scherer, an experienced ICW cruiser that travels annually on his Beneteau 423 sailboat, Fleetwing. He’s been an active voice on social media and crowd-sourced navigation apps for years, becoming well-known during Active Captain’s heyday before its sale to Garmin and subsequent decline. You can now find his updates published in Waterway Guide’s data and on his website.
Bob is apparently a former IBM engineer who likes to combine various pieces of data into a more understandable package. So, by pulling on his experience running the ICW and available data from the US Army Corps of Engineers, NOAA, and now other cruisers through crowd-sourcing, Bob started fine-tuning and saving his GPS routes along the ICW and sharing them with others.
At one point, you could look up a trouble spot on the ICW, find Bob’s tracks through the area, and then follow his route to get at least some inkling of where the deepest water should be.
In many cases, Bob’s tracks represented the freshest information — they were probably updated within the last six months, much more recently than charts, markers and buoys, or even the Army Corps of Engineer surveys.
The Problem with Bob’s ICW Tracks
When we started traveling on the ICW over a decade ago, the channel’s centerline was marked with a magenta line on most charts and chartplotters. As straightforward as this was to understand for some, many boaters ran afoul (and aground) by following the magenta line.
One of the problems with navigating the ICW is that there are a handful of trouble spots where shifting shoals make passage difficult. Things happen before the markers can be moved and certainly before print and electronic charts can be updated. One good storm can move the deep water around or shoal an area from 8 feet deep to only 4.
The magenta line disappeared after a Florida Man followed it right onto a sandbar. The boat driver’s wife was critically injured in the crash. Sure, they were on the magenta line, but the line passed a marker on the wrong side. Of course, the boater was proceeding at high speed because that’s how it’s done in Florida — recklessly. I’ve lived in Florida for most of my life and can vouch for this: Florida’s known for recklessness on its highways, but its waterways are even worse.
Ultimately, the boater sued Garmin, who settled out of court. They, and everyone else, removed the magenta line from the charts. You can read a summary of the lawsuit and accident from Passagemaker Magazine.
None of this has anything to do with Bob, and it’s mostly ancient history since the magenta line is long gone.
But Bob has recently been taking criticism for how widely his tracks have been adopted by new cruisers. The problem is not in the availability of Bob’s data but in how boaters use it. Some, perhaps, as recklessly as a Florida Man in a speed boat.
How to Use Bob423’s ICW Tracks the Right Way
In its present form, Bob423 is effectively republishing the old magenta line, albeit with more information and timely updates. You have to do some work to see them, either using the Aqua Map app (which now has a menu option to show them) or downloading them yourself from his website. In the end, you get a line that shows Bob’s precise path — or something very much like it.
It’s worth noting, however, that Bob has a team of helpers. He’s scouring internet groups and taking recruits who are willing to share their tracks and sounding logs. He updates the tracks manually whenever a new USACE survey gets posted, a section is dredged, or someone reports shoaling.
So, if you’re heading up or down the ICW, it’s silly not to look at Bob423’s ICW tracks for reference. They still contain some of the freshest information available on where to find the deep water.
But you absolutely should NOT put Bob’s track into your chartplotter and follow it like a new religion. That sounds ridiculous, but that’s what we see people doing all the time — they’re scared to divert from Bob’s track, even in safe areas, because they don’t understand the basics of navigating without them.
The tracks may represent the deepest in trouble areas, but for most of the ICW’s length, the tracks are just the route some boat took a few months ago. That boat could have been going north or southbound, diverting around an oncoming barge, or distractedly drifting off course as the driver made their tea. There’s no way any of us should be trusting it for all 1,100 miles of the ICW; we’ve got to be heads-up and eyes-out, keeping watch and maintaining command of our vessels.
The Rules of the Road always take precedence over Bob’s tracks. Period, full stop, end of story.
ICW Trouble Spots Where You Should Always Consult Bob’s Tracks
Even with a solid understanding of the tides, winds, and channel markers on the ICW, some spots still shoal quickly and require extra caution. Most of these are located in places with sandy bottoms where there are inlets between the outer barrier islands, where strong tidal currents move the bottom sediments around readily.
From north to south, here are the spots where I would always want to look at not only Bob’s tracks but also the most recent Army Corps Surveys, Navionics SonarCharts, and user comments on Active Captain and Waterway Guide.
(Note: The referenced inlets indicate the stretch of ICW that crosses an inlet channel, not the inlet itself. Most of the inlets listed here are not navigable by cruising boats.)
NC
- Bogue Sound
- Browns Inlet
- New River Inlet
- Topsail Inlet
- Carolina Beach Inlet
- Snows Cut
- Lockwoods Folly Inlet
- Shallotte Inlet
SC
- McClellenenville area
- Isle of Palms area
- Stono River area
GA
- Hells Gate
- Jekyll Island area
FL
- Amelia Island area
- Matanzas Inlet
- Ponce de Leon Inlet
- St Lucie Inlet
This is not an exhaustive list of tricky places on the ICW, but it’s a list of places where you must make extra effort to check all available information. Other spots along the way may be surrounded by shallow areas or have very narrow, hard-to-follow channels, but they are more predictable. Stay in the channel, follow the markers, and you’ll be fine.
General ICW Navigation Tips
In aviation, we teach our students the order in which they must prioritize their tasks as pilot in command: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.
Aviate means you must keep control of the aircraft, maintaining safe operations. It is the airmanship part of flying, the ability to be in command.
Navigate means you must know where they are and where they are trying to go.
Communicate, the last on the list, means you can talk to air traffic controllers and jabber on the radio, but only if you have already done the Aviate and Navigate tasks.
Piloting and commanding your vessel
The first step to running the ICW without incident is to Aviate. Would that make it “boat-igate” or simply “piloting”? Whatever word you like, you should maintain command of your vessel and not kill anyone. It means exercising some basic seamanship.
More specifically, it means knowing the rules of the road, giving way to stand on vessels, and making your intentions clear to others by operating predictably and safely. It means avoiding crossing another vessel’s bow, not operating too fast, and not too close to other vessels.
You could fill a book with all the best practices, but a good start for the ICW comes from staying on the correct side of the channel when there’s other traffic nearby (the starboard/right-hand side) and making it clear that you will pass oncoming traffic port-to-port in all but the most extraneous circumstances.
If you’re overtaking another vessel, it means making your intentions obvious early, passing other vessels on their port side unless you’ve made alternative arrangments on the VHF, and giving them as much space as possible.
ICW Navigation
After you have tended to all that, you must worry about navigating. From looking at your charts before you set out, you should know where the tight spots are and where there is plenty of room to maneuver. If an area has deep water all around, you don’t HAVE to stay on any imaginary line.
But there are places where each side of the channel is lined with shallows, and this is where ICW travel gets tricky and the line is helpful. You’ve got to know where the channel is and how to stay there.
There are plenty of markers, but the channel is very frequently narrow and impossible to see. Sometimes, the markers are far apart. You must be aware of the markers ahead of and behind you to stay in the channel. Binoculars are invaluable.
You must also know how the wind and current affect your ground track, perhaps moving you out of the channel toward shallower water. This is done with your eyes, not your GPS. But the GPS should help you back up what you’re already seeing.
We’re lucky that the ICW is so well-marked. You don’t have to know how to use dead reckoning to navigate it (although it’s a valuable skill to learn). There are always enough references to complete the trip using pilotage, visually navigating from one marker to the next.
Communication on the ICW
The VHF radio lets you communicate with other boaters to confirm their intentions. But it never replaces the piloting and navigating that you must do above — you’re still responsible for knowing the rules of the road and how it should work, even if you intend to work out some other arrangement with other boaters.
Using the VHF helps you make decisions by giving you advanced notice of passing or overtaking scenarios. You’ll need to hear and speak on the radio often on the ICW, especially during busy seasons, so make sure you have a radio at the helm. If your radio is down below, buy a handheld.
In lieu of using the VHF, the traditional method of making arrangments is with sound signals or “whistles.” No one does this, however, as the commercial guys are all chatting on the VHF (VHF Channel 13 for commercial operations, you should monitor it when on the ICW in busy areas or calling a barge).
Limitations of Crowd-Sourced Data
Active Captain was the first true crowd-sourced navigation tool we had on the ICW, and it quickly became apparent that it was both helpful and a scourge.
It’s helpful because no other resource provides the same information. Charts and cruising guides go out of date the moment they’re published. They’re also frequently written and edited by people who have never been there! Internet forums and groups are handy, but you can hardly see them on a map as you’re piloting.
But crowd-sourced data is also incredibly annoying. Just like every other part of the internet, no education or experience is required to post. The result is a slew of hazard markers dotted along the waterway, all complaining about unexpectedly running aground or a log floating by in 2019. Most of the time, they’re simply taking up space (and brain power to read and worry about them). These folks departed the obvious channel and didn’t know where they were at the time — they missed the pilotage and navigation steps. The log, by the way, is long gone.
On our boat, we still call it “Grumpy Captain.”
Today, many of our favorite boating apps use some amount of crowd-sourced data. Waterway Guide is one of the best examples, because they curate the data, checking each entry for accuracy before posting it live (an invaluable step). Unfortunately, WG only covers the East Coast and the Bahamas. Noforeignland is a good example of a well-run app that centers on information for international voyagers, but as more cruisers use it the more questionable some of the data becomes.
The Real Value of Bob423’s ICW Tracks
Bob has done a great job and provided a service to the boating community, but it doesn’t relieve us of our duty as boaters to get it right on our own. We should be able to pilot our boats, navigate them safely, and communicate to enhance safety.
But, when the ICW throws us for a loop, Bob’s tracks can help us all keep our keels out of the mud and our egos intact.
Looking for more tips and tricks to navigate the ICW like a pro? Boat Life Academy is re-launching our ICW course to help first-timers learn everything they need to know before setting out.
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