  The interstellar gas in spiral galaxies can constitute a significant fraction
of the baryon mass and it has been demonstrated that the sum of stellar and gas
components correlates well with the kinematic signature of the total mass
content, the widths of HI line profiles. The correlation of baryonic mass with
HI line widths is used here to obtain distances for 9984 galaxies extending to
~0.05c. The sample is HI flux limited and a correction is required to account
for an HI selection bias. The absolute scale is established by 64 galaxies with
known distances from studies of Cepheid variables and/or the magnitudes of
stars at the tip of the red giant branch. The calibration of the baryonic
relationship results in a determination of the Hubble constant of H_0=75.5+-2.5
km/s/Mpc. The error estimate is statistical. This material will be combined
with contributions from other methodologies in a subsequent article where
systematic uncertainties will be investigated.
