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Book & Film Picks Along the ICW (Part 1 of 2)
by Diana Doyle

Editors Note: If you purchase any item mentioned in this issue of the newsletter between now and September 15, 2005, we will give it to you at a discount of 15%.

During nasty weather, is there anything more satisfying than hunkering down after a big lunch with a good book (and a little catnap)? Believe me, there are worse ways to wait out that norther!

When the weather is balmy, cruisers live the dream: reclining in their cockpit with a book, a drink, a well-set anchor, and the setting sun. Books and boats have always gone together, no matter the weather. And given the last decade's growth in laptops aboard, DVDs are slowly but surely becoming nearly as universal.

Many cruisers read whatever they glean from marina book swaps. But this means when books are scarce, women turn to cover-worn John D. MacDonald novels, tolerating the dated sexism of Travis McGee, and men find their sensitive sides while picking up a Danielle Steele novel. (Admit it, guys.)

Rather than relying on whatever you can scrounge from book swaps, it’s a good idea to bring along a handful of entertaining regional books & DVDs to boost your appreciation of the local cruising grounds.

The following are excerpts from a new ICW cruising guide, Managing the Waterway: Hampton Roads, VA to Biscayne Bay, FL, by Mark and Diana Doyle. This is the first in a two-part series, with book & film recommendations for Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The next newsletter will conclude the series with Georgia and Florida picks.

Virginia:

With his teenage son and a cat as crew, Henry Plummer left Massachusetts to sail the inland passage to Florida. The year was 1912 and the Intracoastal Waterway was very different than today. There were few marinas, minimal dredging, and only primitive navigation aids.

Plummer chronicles his travels in The Boy, Me and the Cat: Life Aboard a Small Boat from Massachusetts to Florida and Back. You think you have grievances about the Waterway? This book puts today’s small boating inconveniences into perspective. Without aids and dredging, they ran aground constantly. Their meals were largely what they could catch. They ate oysters, plovers, turtles—and anything else that swam, flew, or crawled. Meanwhile their landlubber cat was completely traumatized by life aboard a 24-foot boat. Nearly 100 years later, this book still ranks as the best travelogue ever written about the Intracoastal Waterway.

Dee Carstarphen's book, Narrow Waters, subtitled "an artist’s memoir of sailing through sound, swamp, city, forest, marsh, and glade," is a travelogue in words and watercolor illustrations. It covers the ICW from the Chesapeake to the Dry Tortugas with beautiful illustrations and rich handwritten annotations.

North Carolina:

What better place to read about the wind than North Carolina? With its broad sounds known for their nasty fetch, the magnitude of the wind becomes a daily part of life aboard a cruising vessel. It was Admiral Francis Beaufort who promoted the idea of measuring the wind using an observable scale. The town of Beaufort, North Carolina was not named after this Beaufort, but no matter. In fact, Beaufort of the wind scale fame removed his name whenever it showed up on a map. In his old age he finally acquiesced, allowing his name to be used for a sea discovered in the search for the Northwest Passage.

A new book, Defining the Wind (please call Bluewater for availability) by Scott Huler, is a fascinating story of Beaufort and the development of the wind scale that bears his name. Like Dava Sobel’s book, Longitude, Huler weaves a tale of scientific discovery, "borrowed" inventions, and the fight to promote unconventional thinking.

South Carolina:

As you reach Charleston, Wind from the Carolinas, by Robert Wilder, tells the story of a family’s history over the generations. His settings migrate between Charleston and the Bahamas. This light read is wildly popular in the Bahamas, where it’s sold in many small shops. Even if you are not continuing on to the Bahamas, the story is the engrossing account of the Loyalists in Charleston and their struggles to start a new life in the Bahamas after the Revolution.

While anchored or docked in Beaufort, you can view the local sites on the silver screen. The classic film Forrest Gump (1984), with Tom Hanks, was filmed all around Beaufort, including the local shrimp docks. The baby-boomer classic Big Chill (1983) was filmed at the Fripps House, a short distance from the Beaufort town docks. You’ll recognize many scenes from downtown Beaufort watching this film.

Daufuskie Island, just north of the Georgia Border, was the setting for Beaufort-bred author Pat Conroy’s first book. His story, The Water is Wide (later made into the mediocre John Voight film Conrack), describes his year as an idealistic young teacher on this isolated Gullah-speaking island. Conroy went on to write the best-selling book and then the screenplay, Prince of Tides, made into a movie with Nick Nolte and Barbara Streisand in 1991.

About the Author: Diana Doyle is coauthor with Mark Doyle of a new cruising guide to the ICW. A former college teacher who holds a USCG 50-ton Master's License, she cruises on their PDQ 36 Catamaran, Semi-Local.

Editor’s Note: Diana and Mark Doyle have just written a new cruising guide for the ICW. It’s called Managing the Waterway: Hampton Roads, VA to Biscayne Bay, FL,, and you can buy it at Bluewater or Armchair Sailor. Just call us and ask for it. The Doyles had a great idea, which was to write the guide in the format of a business plan. For those of us who are used to the same old guides, this is a refreshing approach. Among many other things, they have included pages of business cards with waterway facility information, which you can photocopy and cut out for your convenience. They also include many interesting historical, cultural and natural facts about different ICW locations. In particular, I like the way they integrate cultural and practical information.

Be advised that cruising guides, while written for your information, are not written for navigation. The Doyles cruise aboard a catamaran with a shallow draft, and they advise anybody to sound ahead and pay close attention to nautical charts when it comes to depth. Many of the anchorages they list might not be suitable for a boat with a deeper draft.

Diana is right about the tradition of book swaps. Boaters have always traded books, and always seem to take great pleasure in this. You will often see book swap tables and shelves in marina laundry and bathroom facilities, and some would agree that a little bit of mildew makes a book that much better. This is a wonderful tradition, and I would hate to see it die. However, Diana is also right that the selection sometimes gets a little stale. (On a side note, I see no problem with men reading Danielle Steele and women reading John D. MacDonald. We just have to recognize the stereotypes, laugh at them, enjoy the books, and move on.)

With the convenience of internet and phone ordering, it’s easy to find books that might otherwise be hard to find. You can always order from us and ask us to ship your books someplace a little further south…