Where's RickD
- Thread starter Brian
- Start date
Hi Brian... I'm here and doing fine... thanks for asking.... just been busy and had a few things go wrong on the boat for me so just sort of laying low recently.
A few weeks ago I made a trip to Essex on the CT river. Really wanted to go as a last run of the season sort of trip. Wunderground had a small craft advisory for the sound that Saturday but I chose to go out anyway. That was my first mistake as trip the from Clinton to Old Saybrook that should have taken me 1/2 hour took me about 2.5 hours as the wind and waves were pushing against us from the starboard bow. They said waves 2 to 4 feet... just before the mouth of the CT river, I had one wave break over the bow of my boat... had to be between 6 and 8 feet easily. Once into the CT river, it was fine, but I was really quite ashamed, for lack of a better word, that I forced the issue to make this trip and conceivably put my life's family in some degree of jeopardy. I should have turned around the minute I saw the conditions when leaving the channel.
Essex itself was great... simply a great destination and we had fun all around.
Then I had my 2nd big dumb*ss moment on the return trip home Sunday. Just north of the I95 bridge my wife and I inexplicably stopped looking at my charts and my chart plotter...something we never do. Just as I begin to think to myself "...wait, I'm not in the channel..." I hear a god awful sound and vibration from the back of the boat. Both props struck rocks below the surface which, while not marked on the channel with a bouy, are clearing marked on my charts. They are 2 feet a low tide and my boat drafts 2'10". I raise my drives and sure enough the starboard prop is pretty bad... almost unrepairably so. Port isn't that bad but I would not try running on it. Also the skeg on my starboard side is gone... just a jagged piece of aluminum remaining.
So I turn the boat around, head back up to Essex, grab a mooring at Dauntless and remove my props right then and there. I ask Dauntless to send them out for repair and we have to have family come pick us up in Essex. The ride home was depressing to say the least... but I am thankful the damage was not more extensive and that no one one injured due to my decisions that weekend.
Next weekend, I got the props back, put them on the boat and took it back to Clinton from Essex with my brother on board. Boat ran beautifully and the conditions were calm this time around.
Anyway, it was a very humbling experience and lessons have been learned. While there's no excuse for not paying attention to where you are at any moment in time, I suppose everyone from time to time as strayed from a channel or simply found themselves somewhere they should not have been. I did that and paid for it with damaged props and drives.
But going out when the conditions clearly indicated I should not was a much worse decision which I will not make again.
--Rick
A few weeks ago I made a trip to Essex on the CT river. Really wanted to go as a last run of the season sort of trip. Wunderground had a small craft advisory for the sound that Saturday but I chose to go out anyway. That was my first mistake as trip the from Clinton to Old Saybrook that should have taken me 1/2 hour took me about 2.5 hours as the wind and waves were pushing against us from the starboard bow. They said waves 2 to 4 feet... just before the mouth of the CT river, I had one wave break over the bow of my boat... had to be between 6 and 8 feet easily. Once into the CT river, it was fine, but I was really quite ashamed, for lack of a better word, that I forced the issue to make this trip and conceivably put my life's family in some degree of jeopardy. I should have turned around the minute I saw the conditions when leaving the channel.
Essex itself was great... simply a great destination and we had fun all around.
Then I had my 2nd big dumb*ss moment on the return trip home Sunday. Just north of the I95 bridge my wife and I inexplicably stopped looking at my charts and my chart plotter...something we never do. Just as I begin to think to myself "...wait, I'm not in the channel..." I hear a god awful sound and vibration from the back of the boat. Both props struck rocks below the surface which, while not marked on the channel with a bouy, are clearing marked on my charts. They are 2 feet a low tide and my boat drafts 2'10". I raise my drives and sure enough the starboard prop is pretty bad... almost unrepairably so. Port isn't that bad but I would not try running on it. Also the skeg on my starboard side is gone... just a jagged piece of aluminum remaining.
So I turn the boat around, head back up to Essex, grab a mooring at Dauntless and remove my props right then and there. I ask Dauntless to send them out for repair and we have to have family come pick us up in Essex. The ride home was depressing to say the least... but I am thankful the damage was not more extensive and that no one one injured due to my decisions that weekend.
Next weekend, I got the props back, put them on the boat and took it back to Clinton from Essex with my brother on board. Boat ran beautifully and the conditions were calm this time around.
Anyway, it was a very humbling experience and lessons have been learned. While there's no excuse for not paying attention to where you are at any moment in time, I suppose everyone from time to time as strayed from a channel or simply found themselves somewhere they should not have been. I did that and paid for it with damaged props and drives.
But going out when the conditions clearly indicated I should not was a much worse decision which I will not make again.
--Rick
Rick, I believe i know the spot...east side of the river alongside Calves Island? If so I can tell you you`re not the only one the find those "Turtles". a few years back we had nestled the small boat up the the island to let the dogs play on the beach, watched a 40+ footer come up river on the wrong side of the bouy, heading for us, the rocks stopped him dead.