Ran aground

[the gooch]

Man, what a weekend. My wife and I took her sister and nephews out to Key Largo yesterday for a snorkel/scuba trip. We rented a boat from Pennekamp marina to go hop around in. First trip was to Dry Rocks to go see the Christ of the Deep statue. Made it there fine. Had a blast and got to dive while the rest where snorkeling.

After we got tired of that one spot we decided to head over towards French reef. Stayed at French Reef for a little while and next stop was over towards White Bank. We were heading over here to do some fishing. The weather was turning a little bit on us and it was completely overcast compared to clear skies we had just an hour to two prior.

Just as I am looking for a shoal marker I hear a loud clank and wonder what was that, then the grinding continued and I killed both engines and raised them out of the water. Peeking back I saw that one of the props was trashed and the other had seen better days. I hop out of the boat and I am in about 2-3 ft of water. SOB!

The overcast clouds made all areas of water seem the same color and I was not able to read the depths, being low tide did not help either. So we limped it back to the marina where the dockmaster had a good laugh and said "Don't think you are the only one! haha".

Good thing is nobody got hurt and the damage was less than what it could've been had I not stop so soon.

Lesson learned: get familiar with the area and proceed with caution in the keys when overcast.

[thesmoothdome]

Wow. That's a drag. Glad it wasn't worse. I'm still jealous though. You have a boat .

[kevinj1]

I have seen many boats hit the shallows in the Keys. Glad to hear nobody got hurt.

[DUnder]

wow 2 props plus boat rental, ouch! I glad no one got hurt. Other than running aground I hope you had an enjoyable weekend.

[the gooch]

Even with the mishap everyone still had fun. Main thing is that nobody got hurt.

[fire diver]

Glad you are safe. I think the Spanish found some shallow spots in that area as well.

I've run onto unseen sandbars and shallows in my boat too. It really sucks. Last time I spent about half an hour in the water behind my boat with a rock. I was using it to re-shape my prop and get rid of all the mangled metal that would have made boating very difficult.

I bought a cheap fishfinder after that one, and haven't damaged a prop since. But sometimes the bottom comes up so fast, the only thing I can do is cut the motor and raise the outdrive REALLY fast.

FD