As the Gulf Stream flows along the outer edge of the southeastern United States' continental shelf, it meanders on and offshore, creating frontal eddies which influence the exchange of water between the shelf and the adjacent Atlantic Ocean on weakly timescales. The dynamics controlling the development of such features in this region, the ''South Atlantic Bight'' or SAB, is the subject of this pair of papers. In the present paper we provide the background on the subject, summarize the length, time, and velocity scales associated with these features, and discuss meander energetics as simulated by a numerical model. The scaling indicates that significant ageostrophic dynamics may be crucial to the development of these flows and that the semigeostrophic equations may provide the simplest description of the system. These nonlinear dynamics may permit complex interactions among meander modes and with topography resulting in the observed behavior of the Gulf Stream in the SAB. The Princeton Ocean Model was tuned for conditions which prevail in the southern South Atlantic Bight, and idealized numerical simulations of Gulf Stream meanders and associated frontal eddies were performed. The system was found to be sensitive to both the amplitude and period of a small perturbation applied at the southern boundary. The energetics indicate that the development of these features is controlled by a mixture of both baroclinic and barotropic instabilities of the mean Gulf Stream flow. Tantalizing hints of a period-doubling phenomenon are present in the energy conversion time series. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1995