Hit the bar

alumaman

alumaman

Well-Known Member
I was at Tyee spit the other evening and some guy was clipping along pretty close to shore until he hit the gravel bar at the mouth of the campbell river. The bar was partly submerged so if your not familiar with the area your in trouble. Luckily It didn't look like anyone was hurt. It must have been a slow trip back to the ramp with the kicker.
 
Another one hits the bar. A hard bottom zodiac clipping along and comes to a quick stop. I heard this one hit his motor and the F bombs to follow. He got lucky and after checking stuff out he carried on.


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Looks pretty visible this time. That sucks. I guess that’s how you learn though
 
I would hit sandbars all the time when running around the end of gillnets in the Fraser.
With experience you develop a good reaction when you first hit, throttle down and into neutral, when the stern wave picks up the stern, into reverse you go and the wave will pick up the hull to allow you to slide back out. You have to be quick and it works up to a certain speed, which varies for different boats. Bonus feature is a nice scrubbed hull. Check your raw water strainers after pulling this off.
 
Years ago I hit bottom on Upper Quinsam lake going flat out in my 14 ft Lund with a 20 horse Johnson, the lake was really high so the rock outcrop/bottom was hidden. I disintegrated a prop, cowling flew off and my youngest daughter was on her knees in the from of the boat, not a nice experience, luckily no one was hurt, before I ever had a chart plotter. I always noticed the memorial of a few snow mobiles in that area that drowned in that same area from I what think was going through the ice.
 
Mud, sand and gravel bars are way more forgiving than rocks. Even more so if one has an outboard that can flip up if striking the bottom (non-hydraulic tilts).

Many of those rivermouth/estuary bars move around during floods - which is why CHS usually puts a warning and dashes the depth isobars lines in these areas. Having said that - one should goes slow their 1st few times in/out of those areas - and takes the time to plot waypoints and a trackline in the middle of the thalweg. On sunny days - polarized glasses help quite a bit in seeing the bottom.

Another issue not generally known is that prior to the 1970s or so - much of the soundings were done using old British Admiralty sounding data using lead lines for the earliest charts surveyed sometimes after 1st contact 1750s or so. In between the survey lines and in-between lead drops - there were often hidden rocks. Sometime in the early 1980s CHS began using launches fitted-out with a swath of sounders to re-survey some of the worst and least-surveyed areas - esp. up North. So user beware! There is a learning curve getting to know an area.

That's why it is always prudent to give shallow areas a wide berth and not cut corners or take unnecessary chances.

On the charts - how and when the survey for each area displayed ion the chart was taken should be reviewed in the little boxes on the sides. Many newbie and inexperienced boaters don't know or think of these things....
 
I hit the nicest sand bar on Pitt Lake a few years ago. It just gradually slowed down the boat, killed the motor, buffed the underside of the hull. I got really lucky. No prop damage. We just floated back off of it and went on our way. It was in the narrow section but I was in between the red and green buoys so figured I was safe. I wasn't looking at the chart but could definitely see a shallower spot on there afterwards
 
Watching all types of vessels smoke Mission Point on the Coast was a weekly event when I was a kid in that area during summers. People freak out when its nasty and gravitate towards shore, which is the worst strategy in that area of the straits, then miss the point at Chapman Creek. There was one sailboat that was on the point for three days until he finally realized it will be a month before he's off unless he accepts a tow. Anyway, the ocean is always shifting about and knock on wood I haven't end up one on yet too haha.
 
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There’s those who have run aground, and those who will!!!
With modern electronics, such as Navionics, I don’t know why people wouldn’t use it on their phones on small boats.
 
I was on Atlin lake clipping along a ways from shore and saw a bunch seagulls in the water. Once I got close enough I saw they were standing, I backed off on the the throttle and slammed the boat in reverse. There was a reef about an inch under the water, I was lucky that day. Three guys were hunting in the late fall who weren't as fortunate. They smoked the reef, one guy got slammed under the bow and hurt pretty bad. They were stuck there for the night and most of the day.
 
Coyote Spooner said:
There’s those who have run aground, and those who will!!!
With modern electronics, such as Navionics, I don’t know why people wouldn’t use it on their phones on small boats.
Click to expand...
I was running down the South Thompson and obeying the marker bouys one day and didn’t realize the high water had pushed the buoy onto a gravel bar and I hit it at about 30mph. Only thing that saved me from flying fwd was that my outboard at the time was a manual tilt so it kind of absorbed the impact. Prop was farked after though. Same happened in port renfrew. First time there I jumped in the boat and immediately ground about 3” off a prop trying to make it through the mouth of the inlet. Both learning lessons. One: just because it’s marked, doesn’t mean it’s right and second, don’t let fish fever cause you to make faulty decisions. I guess theres actually a 3rd lesson there ….always, always, always carry a spare prop
 
I have front row seats to watch people get hung up on the multiple reefs in false narrows. Happens probably 5+ times a summer and it’s always fun to watch. A memorable one was a commercial prawn boat that got stuck in an awkward position and as the tide went out their boat was half on the reef and half hanging off an edge. Their boat started to roll so the crew hung buckets of water (and themselves) off the side to keep it from flipping. they were probably there for a good 7 or 8 hours hanging off the side of the boat before they could move on just after sundown.
 
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