Malibu - hits the rocks in 2000

T

tom&shan

New member
centerisland":236m90rz said:
As a followup on the stabilizers thing...I tracked down the info on the sinking of the classic yacht Malibu in 2000 when it's stabilizer was ripped from the hull:
[url=http://archives.seattletimes....chives.seattletimes.nwsource.c ... uery=yacht
[/url]
Declared a total loss, the owner rebuilt it (at a cost of twice what it was worth):
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw05072006/living.html
...
Click to expand...

This was from another topic discussion - but my question for the C-Brats is how can something like this happen? I've spent the summer tooling around the San Juans, and as inexperienced as I am - is it just luck that I have stayed off the rocks ? The article states: "The Malibu went aground off Wasp Island in good weather and calm seas last Wednesday...the yacht was going 10 knots when it hit the rocks, ..."
Any ideas?

Tom
 
There are some areas up there that demand special diligence. Clements Reef north of Sucia and a nasty reef west of Spieden come to mind. My GPS has a neat feature New_Guardian_Screen.thumb.jpg called Guardian Anti-Grounding that is SUPPOSED to prevent such mishaps. It's basically a programmable "cone" that extends forward along your course line. If anything charted interupts it an alarm sounds. Of course, it doesn't work too well with deadheads.
 
At least one large boat seems to go on the rocks each year in the PNW. When we were up there, one of the 100 passanger cruise liners went on the rocks (several have since). A 90 foot yacht hit Vancouver Rock--the owner at the helm, and took most of the bottom out--a crew was hired to work 24 hours a day to rebuild the boat in Shearwater. A year or so ago one of the ferry's went on the rocks.

It boils down to not paying attention to what is being done in the wheel house! I can understand at night in the fog, but with chart plotters, and other modern devices, hard to understand!
 
Earlier this year a boat that had just started taking people on a sightseeing tour of Deception Pass ran around -- at Deception Pass. :roll:

Warren
 
When we were up north this year was told was that the Empress of the North ran aground earlier in the year on marked rocks with a load of passengers. In 2004 we had followed it across the bar going to Laconte Glacier in the fog. Maybe depending on them wasn't such a good idea, though at the time it seemed like the right thing to do since we wanted to see the glacier and had earlier lost our electronic charting system in Fords Terror.

We ran aground on Sister Lake, Chichagof Island this year, but it wasn't exactly a normal situation. Results could have been very bad with a little more speed. Any time your boating for any reason in among the rocks in shallow water your taking a definite risk and shouldn't be there unless you and your passengers realise it and are willing to accept the possible consequences.

In normal cruising circumstances or in boats large or small that are carrying passengers for pay with today's charting systems this just shouldn't happen. Each time it does it seems someone has made what amounts to a screw up of a life time.

This a photo of the Empress of the North out of Petersburg and the one below it us following it crossing the Laconte Inlet bar.
alaska_2004_trip_008.sized.jpg
alaska_2004_trip_105.sized.jpg
 
It isn't rocks...but it rocks the mind ~
We, to get away from it all and keep cool, often anchor on Lake St. Clair at a place called "Sand Island"; it is a site where the Middle Channel of the St. Clair River deposits its silt in Lake St. Clair (MICHIGAN).
Enough of the geography lesson....it's on the charts, it's been there "forever" / it's also on a couple of direct "as the crow flies" routes of where boats go out to and where they go back to :
An added "attraction" to our relaxation is the boat-an-hour rate of groundings and almost-groundings on the weekends and evenings. The "bonus entertainment" is the boaters screaming on the radio: "Why doesn't the Coast Guard do something about this!!?"
Fortunately for those who aren't hurled into steering wheels and windows, Sand Island is what it is described as....sand (not rock)! (There are other descriptions of the area on the charts: uncovers, marsh, "1" foot depth.)
Be safe out there!!!
therevdr on DRIFTWOOD DREI
 
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