St Augustine inlet

[Matt Johnson]

Ugh.... worst inlet ever! Thanks to us not seeing this thread before we left St Mary GA, I now have to drop my keel, build a new rudder, tab some bulkheads, new prop shaft, strut, cutlass bearings, motor mounts and a ton of other things.

St. Augustine, The Cutest Little Town You Could Almost Shipwreck Your Boat In | Matt & Jessica's Sailing Page

Checkout the Riverkeepers site for good info on this inlet. Chris does an awesome job!

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by funjohnson

Ugh.... worst inlet ever! Thanks to us not seeing this thread before we left St Mary GA, I now have to drop my keel, build a new rudder, tab some bulkheads, new prop shaft, strut, cutlass bearings, motor mounts and a ton of other things.

St. Augustine, The Cutest Little Town You Could Almost Shipwreck Your Boat In | Matt & Jessica's Sailing Page

Checkout the Riverkeepers site for good info on this inlet. Chris does an awesome job!

Hope insurance is covering this incident and the repairs go quick. Sounds like a lesson learned.

[Matt Johnson]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Sounds like a lesson learned.

No doubt! We have learned a ton of lessons from this incident... I wish they were learned a different way, but at least we are here today.

[mbianka]

Originally Posted by funjohnson

Ugh.... worst inlet ever! Thanks to us not seeing this thread before we left St Mary GA, I now have to drop my keel, build a new rudder, tab some bulkheads, new prop shaft, strut, cutlass bearings, motor mounts and a ton of other things.

St. Augustine, The Cutest Little Town You Could Almost Shipwreck Your Boat In | Matt & Jessica's Sailing Page

Checkout the Riverkeepers site for good info on this inlet. Chris does an awesome job!

Funjohnson:

Excellent Lesson Learned post. Very informative and a good description of the chaos that initially happens when things start to go bad. Thanks for posting it. Hope you and the boat are out of the yard and back on the water soon.

[RTB]

Originally Posted by funjohnson

Ugh.... worst inlet ever! Thanks to us not seeing this thread before we left St Mary GA, I now have to drop my keel, build a new rudder, tab some bulkheads, new prop shaft, strut, cutlass bearings, motor mounts and a ton of other things.

St. Augustine, The Cutest Little Town You Could Almost Shipwreck Your Boat In | Matt & Jessica's Sailing Page

Checkout the Riverkeepers site for good info on this inlet. Chris does an awesome job!

Wow! That was a very well-written account of when things went wrong. Sorry that you broke your boat, but happy that you made it in safe eventually.

There are plenty of inlets that can bite you. Fortunately, we didn't suffer the same fate as you, but it could have happened easily. I learned from our experience, because I know what I did was a huge risk. We simply got lucky, and didn't make any mistakes. It had gotten dark, before we entered the Choctawhatchee Bay Inlet to Destin. It was a rough ride in, and holding my course was difficult. We made it in, as I could hear breakers just over my right shoulder. It was really close.

There is plenty of current info available out there on inlets. Like the one I did, from Active Captain-CAUTION: Making this approach at night or when the waves are high is very dangerous if you do not have local knowledge of the sand bars at the entrance.

[Matt Johnson]

Thanks guys! I hope to be back in the water and to the Bahamas within about two months. Really depends on if we can get the insurance company to allow us to start work at the beginning of the year.

[Kohanadiver]

Originally Posted by funjohnson

Thanks guys! I hope to be back in the water and to the Bahamas within about two months. Really depends on if we can get the insurance company to allow us to start work at the beginning of the year.

Funjohnson

How is it going? We met at the this years Xmas party at SAMC. We start south from Cumberland, tomorrow. Never got a chance to exchange emails, pm me. Good luck, hope to see you along the way, take care SV/ Ka Honu

[Sailndive345]

Originally Posted by funjohnson

Ugh.... worst inlet ever! Thanks to us not seeing this thread before we left St Mary GA, I now have to drop my keel, build a new rudder, tab some bulkheads, new prop shaft, strut, cutlass bearings, motor mounts and a ton of other things.

St. Augustine, The Cutest Little Town You Could Almost Shipwreck Your Boat In | Matt & Jessica's Sailing Page

Checkout the Riverkeepers site for good info on this inlet. Chris does an awesome job!

Glad to hear you guys are alright. We seem to regularly have issues at St Augustine inlet. The last one was a Hatteras 64 on the beach within the last couple of weeks.

The buoys are way small to be visible if there is any seas at all or against the setting sun. I don't know why whoever is in charge of this does not seem to be interested in placing the size of markers that can be visible to the radar at least.

To help with the entrance, the best way I have found is to have a route defined on a chartplotter or GPS (if unfamiliar with the inlet) - this way, if confused/disoriented, you can make the appropriate correction; this inlet offers very small margin for error.

Fair winds and happy holidays.

Sailndive
Attachment 51761

[Sailndive345]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Nah, down in Key West.
St A was getting too cold. Great place!


Mark

Even colder now! Enjoy Key West, sounds a lot better than here!

Saildive

[endoftheroad]

Originally Posted by funjohnson

Ugh.... worst inlet ever! Thanks to us not seeing this thread before we left St Mary GA, I now have to drop my keel, build a new rudder, tab some bulkheads, new prop shaft, strut, cutlass bearings, motor mounts and a ton of other things.

St. Augustine, The Cutest Little Town You Could Almost Shipwreck Your Boat In | Matt & Jessica's Sailing Page

Checkout the Riverkeepers site for good info on this inlet. Chris does an awesome job!

OMG!
We had a voilent run aground at the inlet piloting the trench southbound.
Before passing under the bridge we thought we had it all figured out visually.
Learnt alot that day.

[endoftheroad]

By the way what we learned that day was that it was the "WE" that allowed the room for the error. There should be clear responisibilties when 2 heads are working together so eachother cant assume the other has the uncertainties covered.
2 persons at 99 percent is leaving way too much for error.
1 person must be 100 percent.

[Matt Johnson]

Originally Posted by endoftheroad

2 persons at 99 percent is leaving way too much for error.
1 person must be 100 percent.

Ain't that the truth!

I was up on the cabin top with the binoculars and unable to hear my wife's call to Tow Boat. She tried to relay to me what Tow Boat told her to look for when coming into the inlet, but just like the game telephone, something got lost in the translation. She said we needed to find the red buoys and we did...unfortunately, they weren't the ones for the dog leg, but the one for the inlet itself.... we missed the two to our far right.

We should have listen to our guts on this one. Both of us had an uneasy feeling and said we should turn around, but that wasn't acted on in time. We hit the bottom a few seconds later, but it was enough time that we could have pulled a 180 and gotten out of there had we acted right away when out guts said "this is a bad situation".

I saw two other boats when we started the inlet, but I thought they were going past the inlet and further up the coast. We watched them safely make the inlet and turns needed from our boat as we were crashing on the bottom. I really should have turned and waited for someone that knew what they were doing. I figured we were being good sailors by calling for info on the inlet and getting local knowledge. You just really need to know what that local knowledge is telling you.

We did a lot wrong that day. Thank god for a strong boat that is still in one piece and repairable. The boat did a good job making up for the sailors shortcomings.