Two numbers decide what a boat can do on the Southeast ICW, and neither one is length. The federal project provides for a least depth of 12 feet from Norfolk, Virginia (Mile 0.0) down to Fort Pierce, Florida (Mile 965.6), and the fixed bridges over that stretch are charted at 65 feet. How deep a hull sits and how tall it stands settle most of the argument before anyone gets to the cockpit.
It matters most from here into the fall. The southbound fleet leaves the Chesapeake in September, works down through the Carolinas and Georgia in October and November, and winters somewhere between Charleston and Cape Canaveral, with the season's events setting the pace. This is protected water broken up by inlets, marsh cuts and bridges — and the boat that enjoys it is not automatically the boat that wins offshore.
Twelve feet is the design, not what is under the keel
Project depth is what the waterway is built to, not what is there this week. Shoaling is local, seasonal and stubborn: at Mile 329.5 in North Carolina the Shallotte River pushes strong currents and severe shoaling straight into the channel, and stretches like that get resurveyed rather than argued with. Pull the current controlling depths from the Corps of Engineers before you commit to a leg — the project figure is a design standard, not a promise.
Which is where draft stops being a line on a spec sheet. Outboards let a hull lift its running gear clear when it matters: the Pursuit D 326 draws 2 feet 0 inches with the motors up and 2 feet 11 inches with them down. The Boston Whaler 380 Realm draws 2 feet 5 inches. The Grady-White Canyon 336 sits on a 26-inch hull draft. On a falling tide in a Georgia cut, those inches are the difference between carrying on and waiting four hours.
Sixty-five feet, and why it stops being a worry
Fixed bridges through the Carolinas, Georgia and north Florida are charted at 65 feet, and the low span on the entire waterway — 56 feet at the Julia Tuttle Causeway in Miami, Mile 1087.1 — sits far south of anywhere this run goes. For an express cruiser or a console boat with a hardtop, overhead clearance is settled on the day you buy and never comes up again.
It turns into a real conversation the moment a flybridge, a tower or a tall arch enters the picture. The number to get in writing then is air draft with the antennas up, measured on the boat, not the profile drawing. The bridges themselves are worked by radio — VHF-FM channels 13 and 16 are monitored at some of them — so the openers are a scheduling problem, not a clearance one.
Current tires a crew out; chop does not
Inside, the Southeast is a tidal system. At Mile 744.7 in Jacksonville, flood sets across the Atlantic Boulevard bridge at 3.4 knots and the ebb runs 5.2 knots at strength, and 100 yards either side of the bridge the water is practically slack — nothing warns you before you are in it. The Georgia marsh cuts run a gentler version of the same trick all day, twice a day.
What that asks of a boat is control at low speed rather than horsepower: twin engines far enough apart to steer on the throttles, sight lines aft from the helm, and enough displacement to stay planted while the boat is being set sideways. The 380 Realm's 17,000 pounds is doing quiet work in that sentence. So is the D 326's 10-foot-10 beam, which is what fits a boat into a creek anchorage and an ordinary slip.
Three boats that suit this water
| Boat | Overall length | Beam | Draft | Fuel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pursuit D 326 | 34' 6" | 10' 10" | 2' 0" motors up / 2' 11" motors down | 300 US gallons |
| Grady-White Canyon 336 | 33' 6" | 11' 7" | 26" hull draft | 361 US gallons |
| Boston Whaler 380 Realm | 38' 0" | 11' 8" | 2' 5" | 445 gallons |
The Pursuit D 326 is the shallow one and the narrow one, and on this water those are the same virtue. Two feet of draft with the motors tilted opens up creek anchorages behind the barrier islands that a deeper boat reads about and passes. It cruises at 34.4 mph at 4,000 rpm on twin Yamaha F350s, which is enough to make a bridge schedule without running the day at wide-open throttle.
The Grady-White Canyon 336 is the one that goes outside. A 26-inch hull draft keeps it honest in the skinny stretches, and 361 US gallons plus a 31.5 mph cruise at 3,400 rpm on triple Yamaha 350s means an inlet-to-inlet hop offshore is a decision about weather rather than about fuel. Its 11-foot-7 beam buys back a fishing cockpit that earns its keep every time the ocean lies down.
The Boston Whaler 380 Realm is the one you sleep on. At 38 feet with 445 gallons and a 36-knot cruise — 52 knots flat out — it covers a day's ICW mileage before lunch and then stops being transport and starts being accommodation. Note the units: Whaler publishes this boat in knots where Pursuit and Grady-White publish theirs in mph, which is worth holding in your head when the three sit side by side on a screen.
From November, the water sets a speed limit
Seasonal protections for North Atlantic right whales put most vessels 65 feet and longer at 10 knots or less inside the managed areas. The calving and nursery grounds off north Florida and Georgia are in force from November 15 to April 15, and the coastal band running 20 nautical miles offshore between Wilmington, North Carolina and Brunswick, Georgia is active from November 1 to April 30.
All three of these boats sit well under 65 feet, so the offshore legs stay a matter of your own judgement all winter. Buy longer than that and the outside runs come with a clock attached from November onward — worth knowing before you fall for a 70-footer that you plan to bring south every year. Either way, check the NOAA speed zone map before an outside leg, because the voluntary slow zones move with the whales.
Tony's Take
I would buy the 26 inches before I would buy the extra six feet of boat. Every owner I know who runs this coast has a story that ends with a falling tide and a soft bottom, and none of them has a story that ends with wishing the saloon were bigger. The Southeast rewards a boat you can put anywhere and drive slowly — get that right and the coast opens up. Get it wrong and you spend the winter tied to a face dock, watching shallower boats go where you wanted to be.
— Tony Smith, Founder, Minted Yachts
If you are shopping for a boat that has to work between a 65-foot bridge and a two-foot bottom, that is a specific brief and it deserves a specific answer. Email TS@MintedYachts.com, call +1 (404) 805-9819, or send the short version through the lead form and we will come back with the two or three boats that actually fit the run you have in mind.