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Night Time Navigating and how to jump a sand bar!!
Last night a buddy of mine and I went fishing in the Indian River, here in Fl. Not super comfortable with with waterways around here as far as knowing where every little sand bar is (and believe me there are a lot, its mainly all shallow with the Inter-coastal dredged channel through it). So anyways we get underway and start heading to a sweet little fishing spot we've been to a bunch of times during the day, but not at night yet.
Now the inter-coastal is marked but very poorly at that. If you don't have a GPS with waypoints saved or one of those Area maps on your GPS you'll find yourself guessing where the next channel marker is. Now mainly shallow water doesn't bother me cause the boat draws like 9inches of water so not usually a big deal, but with last nights full moon and really low tide created some issues for even skinny water boats.
So we are driving along at 25mph arguing over where the next channel marker is. He says to left I say to the right, so we split difference, and cruise down the middle looking for the next flashing light. Which in my opinion should be like every 500ft or so, but definitely not the case. So low and behold out of no where boat goes airborne like 2ft in the air and the motor is screaming and then lands nice and smooth right back in the water. My heart just dropped cause I immediately thought the boat was damaged. There was no way in my mind that we just jumped that sand bar without hurting the boat. So we stop and turn around to see just what we hit. A sand bar 8ft across and about 40 ft long hidden just under the ripple of the water. It was just windy enough to keep that typical flat water shallow look from forming making it a invisible hazard. So after thoroughly checking the boat for any damage and shaking off the adrenaline and saving a waypoint on the GPS for this ugly bastard, we headed to our fishing spot.
Moral of the Story. BOSTON WHALERS ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not many other boats would have jumped a 8ft sand bar and only have a few scratches in the gel coat to show for it!!!
I love our Boat!
And yes I bought a new GPS this morning with all the charts and channels already saved. Never make that mistake again!
Yea we checked everything over very thoroughly. I was expecting a lot of damage but besides some scrapes in the under gel coat on the keel and some some paint missing on the bottom of the lower unit everything checked out. No cracks on the bottom, trim and steering work fine, and i'm guessing the the motor kicked up when we hit so the prop never hit anything. But yes very lucky indeed. Especially that neither of us got hurt. I've heard some horror stories.
Get a paper chart and read it before going out. GPS can be off line, your unit not working and it is not accurate within about 50' unless you have DGPS then about 6'.
Paper charts work all the time.
Ah yes, such is the adventure of being a boat owner. Glad you came through unscathed and is one of those occurances you can put in your back pocket and the next time your in unknown waters, drop the speed a tad, just in case!
It all changes out there at night, "Nightime operations" for us (sometimes we get caught out after dark) mean's "DEAD SLOW", and "Well lit up". I got caught out in the fog one night on someone elses boat (fog rolled in at dusk, I mean some REAL PEA SOUP), I said that we are heading "East", 2 other's on the boat said that we are heading "West", I protested, I was told "2 out of 3 say that we are heading "West", so we're headed west", no compass of course, then the fishing pier showed up out of the fog and darkness with people screaming "LOOK OUT" on the dock. We made a HARD port turn and just missed the dock... I replied "Now do you belive we're headed "East" Mr. 2 out of 3, now back off the throttle a bit, we're making way a bit too fast", I found the R/R bridge and followed it in land, Very scarey, a poor captain, and poor judgement, the guy was a bit too "Risky" for my comfort, I never got bit by fog rolling in at dusk again, glad that everything turned out O.K. for you, It could have gone the other way, spilling everyone into the water (hope those PFD's were on), there's nothing like the fear of "GOD" thrown into you on the water, "Nightime operations" requires extreme caution.
mw
There is one part of the trip in from the river that scares me to do at night. It's a section called the Narrows, about 100 feet wide, 8 foot deep dead center and as soon as the crabs start to run, full of crab pots. No paper chart will help, the only thing is to follow the GPS track back and hope that all of the wake boarders have gone home.
Hopefully this year, I will get in some evening boating, although thinking about it, evenings may be best spent on the dock watching the sunset.
I don`t fish at night. to many rocks in the inshore gulf just below the surface off Homosassa. If that sand bar was a little bigger, you would have been fishing off it till high tide.
I don`t fish at night. to many rocks in the inshore gulf just below the surface off Homosassa. If that sand bar was a little bigger, you would have been fishing off it till high tide.
