Growing up on Long Island Sound, one hears the phrase uttered from Nutmeggers all the time, " I love going to the Ocean". For Connecticutians, Long Island Sound is the "Ocean" because its salty, big and very different from the local ponds and streams so many of us are used to hiking along here in the foot hills of the Appalachian Chain. But compared to the shoreline of the Eastern United States, Long Island Sound is no more the Ocean, than a Walmart Parking lot is to the Moon. One is tame, distantly reminiscent in feel and habitability, and WAY over developed, while the other is wild, vastly larger and more distant and so much more misunderstood.
The Atlantic Ocean is where my heart calls home, even if my body sometimes is not capable of being there. It is something that touches my soul and cleans my spirit every time I walk along its beaches, get rocked by its waves or fall asleep to its thunderous moans. But while I love it to its briny depths, I so often have difficulty finding my way to it and like most, fear it as much as I appreciate it.
And that is why our forefathers had the foresight to create a passageway for mariners, desperate to get to the more docile little latitudes that would avoid some of the more treacherous aspects including the Gulf Stream, The Grave Yard of the Atlantic and The Bermuda Triangle. And they called it the IntraCoastal Waterway (ICW).
The ICW is little more than a ditch that runs along the Coast of the Eastern US that combines some of the more prominent natural inlets, tidal ways and estuaries of the North Atlantic with some man-made canals, causeways and tributaries. You can actually make a great circle by navigating down the East Coast and Up the Mississippi River system in a clockwise pattern if you wanted to, but my interest begins in the Northern reaches near NYC ends at the tip of Florida. And that is where my journeys this week took me.
I found myself this past week sitting on the banks of the ICW at one of the most prominent and historic stops on the route, Eau Gallie Yacht Club near Melbourne, Florida. While there I got the chance to visit with the good folks of the Space Coast who have derived there livelihood from the Cold War Space Race, and now wonder what is next for their community now that the age of Space exploration seems to be tacking away from Manned Space exploration in favor of robotic probes into the Outer reaches of the Milky Way. Will the lunar perch of Cape Canaveral play an integral role in the future of Space Travel or will it look to its other economic engines of Defense, Tourism and The Ocean?
My hope is that the ICW uses this regional pause for reflection to re-emerge as an economic force for these United States and I feel most certain Eau Gallie will reflect those changes just as it did with its founding in 1907 as a stop along the Indian River and again with its pouring of a Gemini-capsule shaped swimming pool at the commencement of the Space Age. EGYC has been a bell-weather for the changes of the Middle Florida Coast and I feel certain if the ICW is to re-emerge as an economic and cultural conduit to the North Atlantic, EGYC will be the place to look first for that emergence and I hope to play a part.
But yet I digress, you probably don't know a lot about the ICW do you? It is one of those things they don't often cover on PBS and while you've likely crossed it more than once on you way down to Disney Orlando, you probably didn't know you were doing it when you were doing it.
With the decline in boating for the last half century, so has the ICW become a forgotten gem. With the switch from sailing to steamship to petroleum-based boating as well as the the advent of the Cargo Carrier, many of those sailors who once took to the "Ditch" to make their way down to Florida, now chose to "Mail" their boat there on giant transport ships saving time, effort and in many cases money. But just like those travelers who take I-95 instead of the Boston Post Road or Amtrack, much is lost in the translation and many sights, sounds and stories are lost in favor of speed and savings.
I still have so much to learn about the ICW and certainly plan to make a few forays into the North Atlantic over the next few years. I hope that in my travels, I will get a chance to share with you some of those forgotten sights, sounds and stories as I make my cultural mecca southward. Much like the Native peoples of the South Pacific on their voyage to discover South America, I have no real budget and will not be making the journey all at once. An epic voyage here, a plane trip there, a car, a bike and I hope, The Beverly Gee to rely on along the way, it will be a mixed media tapestry. Rather than burn my fleet so as to not allow for a return trip, I do hope to set up a network of friends, avenues and stop overs along the way and it is the mixture of those features that I hope will make this Migration interesting. I will endeavor to keep you posted through my words, videos, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. If I can get a cell phone signal along the way you will see every real time happening I can share and they should be plentiful. From wild feathered foul to nursing Manatees, lumbering sea turtles and of course, at least a few interesting souls, I hope to learn about it all and share what I see and hear. And with the epicurean prowess of the richest coastal resources in the world, I am sure I will eat pretty good along the way too.
That is not to say I am abandoning my efforts to create a school ship, resurrect the Light House Service or do everything I can to make our waters affordable, accessible and usable for all regardless of Income, Residency or Social Standing. Just that I think I can also use my travels as teaching tools and my experiences to help us better understand our link to Oceanus and all that the mighty North Atlantic may hold. It may take a decade or it might end in a few months, that all depends on funding. But if things play out the way I hope they will, you and I will share a great American experience upon our world's Greatest Natural resource, The Ocean and we will all be better for it. Thanks for reading! See you next Friday!
The Atlantic Ocean is where my heart calls home, even if my body sometimes is not capable of being there. It is something that touches my soul and cleans my spirit every time I walk along its beaches, get rocked by its waves or fall asleep to its thunderous moans. But while I love it to its briny depths, I so often have difficulty finding my way to it and like most, fear it as much as I appreciate it.
And that is why our forefathers had the foresight to create a passageway for mariners, desperate to get to the more docile little latitudes that would avoid some of the more treacherous aspects including the Gulf Stream, The Grave Yard of the Atlantic and The Bermuda Triangle. And they called it the IntraCoastal Waterway (ICW).
The ICW is little more than a ditch that runs along the Coast of the Eastern US that combines some of the more prominent natural inlets, tidal ways and estuaries of the North Atlantic with some man-made canals, causeways and tributaries. You can actually make a great circle by navigating down the East Coast and Up the Mississippi River system in a clockwise pattern if you wanted to, but my interest begins in the Northern reaches near NYC ends at the tip of Florida. And that is where my journeys this week took me.
I found myself this past week sitting on the banks of the ICW at one of the most prominent and historic stops on the route, Eau Gallie Yacht Club near Melbourne, Florida. While there I got the chance to visit with the good folks of the Space Coast who have derived there livelihood from the Cold War Space Race, and now wonder what is next for their community now that the age of Space exploration seems to be tacking away from Manned Space exploration in favor of robotic probes into the Outer reaches of the Milky Way. Will the lunar perch of Cape Canaveral play an integral role in the future of Space Travel or will it look to its other economic engines of Defense, Tourism and The Ocean?
My hope is that the ICW uses this regional pause for reflection to re-emerge as an economic force for these United States and I feel most certain Eau Gallie will reflect those changes just as it did with its founding in 1907 as a stop along the Indian River and again with its pouring of a Gemini-capsule shaped swimming pool at the commencement of the Space Age. EGYC has been a bell-weather for the changes of the Middle Florida Coast and I feel certain if the ICW is to re-emerge as an economic and cultural conduit to the North Atlantic, EGYC will be the place to look first for that emergence and I hope to play a part.
But yet I digress, you probably don't know a lot about the ICW do you? It is one of those things they don't often cover on PBS and while you've likely crossed it more than once on you way down to Disney Orlando, you probably didn't know you were doing it when you were doing it.
With the decline in boating for the last half century, so has the ICW become a forgotten gem. With the switch from sailing to steamship to petroleum-based boating as well as the the advent of the Cargo Carrier, many of those sailors who once took to the "Ditch" to make their way down to Florida, now chose to "Mail" their boat there on giant transport ships saving time, effort and in many cases money. But just like those travelers who take I-95 instead of the Boston Post Road or Amtrack, much is lost in the translation and many sights, sounds and stories are lost in favor of speed and savings.
I still have so much to learn about the ICW and certainly plan to make a few forays into the North Atlantic over the next few years. I hope that in my travels, I will get a chance to share with you some of those forgotten sights, sounds and stories as I make my cultural mecca southward. Much like the Native peoples of the South Pacific on their voyage to discover South America, I have no real budget and will not be making the journey all at once. An epic voyage here, a plane trip there, a car, a bike and I hope, The Beverly Gee to rely on along the way, it will be a mixed media tapestry. Rather than burn my fleet so as to not allow for a return trip, I do hope to set up a network of friends, avenues and stop overs along the way and it is the mixture of those features that I hope will make this Migration interesting. I will endeavor to keep you posted through my words, videos, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. If I can get a cell phone signal along the way you will see every real time happening I can share and they should be plentiful. From wild feathered foul to nursing Manatees, lumbering sea turtles and of course, at least a few interesting souls, I hope to learn about it all and share what I see and hear. And with the epicurean prowess of the richest coastal resources in the world, I am sure I will eat pretty good along the way too.
That is not to say I am abandoning my efforts to create a school ship, resurrect the Light House Service or do everything I can to make our waters affordable, accessible and usable for all regardless of Income, Residency or Social Standing. Just that I think I can also use my travels as teaching tools and my experiences to help us better understand our link to Oceanus and all that the mighty North Atlantic may hold. It may take a decade or it might end in a few months, that all depends on funding. But if things play out the way I hope they will, you and I will share a great American experience upon our world's Greatest Natural resource, The Ocean and we will all be better for it. Thanks for reading! See you next Friday!
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