  We present an analysis of Hubble Space Telescope/WFPC2 images of eighteen
galaxies in the Canes Venatici I cloud.
  We derive their distances from the luminosity of the tip of the red giant
branch stars with a typical accuracy of ~12 %. The resulting distances are 3.9
Mpc (UGC 6541), 4.9 Mpc (NGC 3738), 3.0 Mpc (NGC 3741), 4.5 Mpc (KK 109), >6.3
Mpc (NGC 4150), 4.2 Mpc (UGC 7298), 4.5 Mpc (NGC 4244), 4.6 Mpc (NGC 4395), 4.9
Mpc (UGC 7559), 4.2 Mpc (NGC 4449), 4.4 Mpc (UGC 7605), 4.6 Mpc (IC 3687), 4.7
Mpc (KK 166), 4.7 Mpc (NGC 4736), 4.2 Mpc (UGC 8308), 4.3 Mpc (UGC 8320), 4.6
Mpc (NGC 5204), and 3.2 Mpc (UGC 8833). The CVn I cloud has a mean radial
velocity of 286 +- 9 km/s, a mean distance of 4.1 +- 0.2 Mpc, a radial velocity
dispersion of 50 km/s, a mean projected radius of 760 kpc, and a total blue
luminosity of 2.2 * 10^{10} L_{\sun}. Assuming virial or closed orbital motions
for the galaxies, we estimated their virial and their orbital
mass-to-luminosity ratio to be 176 and 88 M_{\sun}/L_{\sun}, respectively.
However, the CVn I cloud is characterized by a crossing time of 15 Gyr, and is
thus far from a state of dynamical equilibrium. The large crossing time for the
cloud, its low content of dSph galaxies ($ < 6$ %), and the almost
``primordial'' shape of its luminosity function show that the CVn I complex is
in a transient dynamical state, driven rather by the free Hubble expansion than
by galaxy interactions.
