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Originally Posted by fred4936
Thank you all for posting! Very helpful for us too! Can you let us know where the dike is that caused the problem? Thanks to all!
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Originally Posted by sailorboy1
Yeah, I know where the big charted one is and the one going into Delaware City free dock. But ................
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 3Days_at_a_time
Which underwater dike did you discover? I had charted a course to go right over the breakwater at the harbor of refuge. We were coming through the entrance to the bay in the middle of the night, just happened to see some strange spots pop up on the radar, and sure enough once I zoomed into my chart far enough there was a little grey line that said it was a break water... we were lucky to have dodged that one, it was pitch black outside, windy, and rough. After that i set the Detail on my chart higher so that it would better show things like that without being zoomed in very far. Good luck with the rest of your travels
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Oh god, the dike. Now I'm having flashbacks. It sounds like it's the same one as 3Days_at_a_time mentioned. It's a three mile long underwater dike that stretches south from Reedy Island parallel to the
shipping channel. I believe it is partly visible at low tide, but we were at high tide so it was submerged. It was completely my fault, but I have to say the markers leave a bit to be desired. The only marker either of us saw was one that we thought marked the end of the island, not the damn dike.
I saw a weird line on the chart plotter, a little voice in my
head said to turn around, I ignored it, and WHAM. Scared the crap out of us. I was sure water was about to start pouring into the
boat. It's obvious on the paper chart, but not so much on the CMap at the zoom level I had.
The marina told us that six boats had sunk in that same area this past summer including a Hatteras 58 in June and a Nordhavn 47 two years previously. We obviously consider ourselves very lucky. Just a flesh wound in the
keel that some
fiberglass and
epoxy took care of, and Bristols have encapsulated keels so we didn't have to drop it to check bolts or anything.
We could have fixed it ourselves but we didn't have the tools and Mr. cthoops doesn't have the energy any more to do the necessary grinding. Delaware City Marina did a great job.
Hope this helps someone avoid the same situation.