Quote:
Originally Posted by camaraderie
Here's a segment of the chart. The actual entrance channel fairway extends a considerable distance at sea but this is just the jetty area. Pretty tough to ignore!
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Don't take it out of context here. I am not making excuses for poor seamanship, but if caught off guard or unprepared bad things can happen there.
Look at the two pictures I posted. I am heading outbound with markers 19 and 17 to my lee. There is a full and complete, partially submerged, jetty in the entire frame of view for each of those pictures just over 100 yards away. Visually there is nothing to indicate the presence of a jetty. Since the seas were running straight in the waves weren't even breaking over it. Now, the distance between markers also needs to be considered. It is 1 nautical mile. Many times the next set of channel markers are not visible from the cockpit of a smaller boat, or even a larger boat in haze or fog. Radar is useless there since all sorts of small boats fish alongside the jetty and would make it difficult to impossible to pick out the channel marker on a radar screen. If you judged the tides wrong you could be experiencing +/- 3 knots which could add to the confusion. There can also be a cross current to contend with. One mile is a long ways to stay on a rhumb line with a 50 yard margin of error. With all the reliable, neat (and cheap) electronic gizmo's and plotters there really isn't much excuse anymore. I was doing it with a hand bearing compass, binoculars, and a paper chart. Judged boat speed by the bow wave, got current from the tables etc.