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2020 Saltwater Thread Part II

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    #46
    Running at night - chop the throttles back. With many of today's boats, capable of running highway speeds......without any brakes or forward headlights = heavy chances.

    Disabled boats, and or kayaks, deadheads in the water.....all pose serious risk. And you can't see any of it till you are literally right on top of it.

    Night vision - it takes roughly 20-30 minutes of no artificial lights on pupils before you truly have night time vision. Electronics - you lose the night vision by huge percentages, glancing at the screen.

    I run with a hand held Q-Beam handy and scan periodically - like a tug skipper pushing down the ICW and I don't run hard and fast. Even though I can run pretty shallow, on navigable sections of the ICW and or other main nav channels, I run off the shorelines at night. You never know if someone anchored or poled down, jumped out and started wading that channel edge, with no lights. And considering the big girls love to feed and breed at night, along those shallow to deep channel edges and spoil islands, many wade anglers fish these edges. And considering today's boats, designed to run skinny water, many operators run shallow because their boats can. All good in sunlight - night time, get out in the main channel. Too many unknown variables running skinny with no vis.

    When I sailed at sea, nights aboard ship, were most particularly nerve wracking. We went out of our way to not screw up our night vision. Even lighting cigarettes, one guy had a cig burning, we lit our cigs from that guys cig - to eliminate the lighter flash. All lights - were dim red. Radar and nav gear - green with scope shields - which eliminates light side scatter. One had to place their entire face down into the shield to see the screen.

    The marine environment is dangerous enough in daylight, factor over half more, running at night.

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      #47
      In on the new threads.

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        #48
        I think Coastal hit the nail on the head on all accounts!

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          #49
          zooming in on Google Earth it sure looks like there is a light on each end and maybe one midway as well. Would be terrible to learn that the light on the end was out and they mistook the mid light as the end. I can see where this would be easy to do coming out of that cut and heading into the first entrance.

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            #50
            I've been by there at night and don't remember lights but wasn't paying attention specifically obviously, only times I've been in/out of it were daytime. There's certainly enough speculation to go around so no point in me adding to it but I sure hope we get some sort of details for educational purposes. One thing for sure, speed kills, and I'm betting that ICW water was moving pretty good ahead of the storm. We run at night all the time, wife is night shift and I worked nights for years so my body keeps reverting back whether I like it or not. It's definitely a different ball game and easy to get disoriented. I refuse to have even a sip of beer if I'm running at night, sometimes reaction time is all you have... people do some pretty dumb shat at night.

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              #51
              Originally posted by justletmein View Post
              I've been by there at night and don't remember lights but wasn't paying attention specifically obviously, only times I've been in/out of it were daytime. There's certainly enough speculation to go around so no point in me adding to it but I sure hope we get some sort of details for educational purposes. One thing for sure, speed kills, and I'm betting that ICW water was moving pretty good ahead of the storm. We run at night all the time, wife is night shift and I worked nights for years so my body keeps reverting back whether I like it or not. It's definitely a different ball game and easy to get disoriented. I refuse to have even a sip of beer if I'm running at night, sometimes reaction time is all you have... people do some pretty dumb shat at night.
              There are definitely lights on the end of the bulkheads just the same as channel markers. I don't know if they may have had one out and that threw off the drivers orientation or something completely different but man you have to be super vigilant at night.

              We fish the pier down there at night quite a bit and that whole area is usually lit up pretty well. I have no insight in to what happened but its a good reminder to us all to pay more attention.

              I have noticed several friends buying the cheap Chinese light bars and while they look bright, when you get out in the bay/marsh at night you realize they really are lacking. Buying quality lights makes a huge difference whether is it a q-beam or light bar. I prefer to not use lights when I can but there are some times when you cant get around it or at least I cant. In POC the channel markers seem to get hit every few months and I would rather run my lights and cruise in easy to be sure I don't end up on top of one of them.

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                #52
                Agree, lights have a time and a place and entering a channel such as this is a good use for them. These guys with them up on the burn bar or console though, once that light comes on they're stuck with it because that night vision is gone gone. I have mine on the bow and even then just reflection off the water can be bad. I like to flick it on just briefly while running around markers or check for kayaker or whatever, then once out in the main bay I'll leave it on to navigate the swells. It's a Chinese light though so I have a nice battery q-beam ready if needed. I think I may upgrade it next year.

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                  #53
                  I ran an offshore boat down the ICW from NOLA to Port A a few years ago. Mississippi river flooding, trees and floatsam in sections of the ICW where the bordering swamps poured debris into the main channel.

                  Ran it no faster than 7-10 mph at night, Q-Beam off and on non-stop. The boat was fully capable of running 35+ mph, twin Yamaha 200s. Even at this very reduced speed, dodging debris and huge boils of Water Lillies, so thick if you ran over them, they fouled the props requiring back down, to blow them out of the blades.

                  I didn't sleep....literally for 3 days. We ran with no more than 2 on deck - safety and two sets of eyes. One set of eyes - viewed the electronics. The other, the helmsman did not.

                  We dodged tugs, trees, water lillie fields and only bumped bottom one time, the entire trip. The bump, we had to yield hard to starboard due to a tug/barge taking up center channel - it's effect on the ICW in that section (hard bank on our starboard), pulled water off the bank.

                  Dodged a head on condition, tug cutting a left bend corner headed east, us on the west bound, barge on our side in a blind turn. Had to gun it and aim for the port bank, completely opposite of our side and right of way. Rack was holding on with a Q-Beam, beaming the bank as I was glued on the bow of the tug - looming down on us.

                  Closest I've come to getting plowed over......night time running.

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                    #54
                    Originally posted by justletmein View Post
                    Agree, lights have a time and a place and entering a channel such as this is a good use for them. These guys with them up on the burn bar or console though, once that light comes on they're stuck with it because that night vision is gone gone. I have mine on the bow and even then just reflection off the water can be bad. I like to flick it on just briefly while running around markers or check for kayaker or whatever, then once out in the main bay I'll leave it on to navigate the swells. It's a Chinese light though so I have a nice battery q-beam ready if needed. I think I may upgrade it next year.
                    I found out the hard way how scary it is when the led goes out when you are trying to run through a long set of channel markers. I knew exactly where I was going but there was no moon and heavy cloud cover. You could not see anything and came around the corner and everything went dark while underway headed to the duck blind. Saving grace was I had a headlamp clipped on my waders and threw that up quickly. It was no bueno, no cheap LEDs for me anymore.

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                      #55
                      Has anybody heard how hard the storm hit the Land Cut? A friend of mine has a cabin on one of the spoils islands on the north end. There are some nice/new camps but lots of ramshackle ones that looked like they were barely standing to start with.. Just wondering if it blew hard enough to knock them into the ICW

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                        #56
                        I saw a little set of pics and videos from down there on facebook. The guy who posted it said there was a whole lot of damage to the floaters and camps down there. His video and pics also showed there were a lot of them that were ok too.

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                          #57
                          Yep https://www.facebook.com/lagunaadventurestx/

                          Originally posted by Coastal Ducks View Post
                          I saw a little set of pics and videos from down there on facebook. The guy who posted it said there was a whole lot of damage to the floaters and camps down there. His video and pics also showed there were a lot of them that were ok too.

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                            #58
                            Originally posted by AtTheWall View Post
                            I ran an offshore boat down the ICW from NOLA to Port A a few years ago. Mississippi river flooding, trees and floatsam in sections of the ICW where the bordering swamps poured debris into the main channel.



                            Ran it no faster than 7-10 mph at night, Q-Beam off and on non-stop. The boat was fully capable of running 35+ mph, twin Yamaha 200s. Even at this very reduced speed, dodging debris and huge boils of Water Lillies, so thick if you ran over them, they fouled the props requiring back down, to blow them out of the blades.



                            I didn't sleep....literally for 3 days. We ran with no more than 2 on deck - safety and two sets of eyes. One set of eyes - viewed the electronics. The other, the helmsman did not.



                            We dodged tugs, trees, water lillie fields and only bumped bottom one time, the entire trip. The bump, we had to yield hard to starboard due to a tug/barge taking up center channel - it's effect on the ICW in that section (hard bank on our starboard), pulled water off the bank.



                            Dodged a head on condition, tug cutting a left bend corner headed east, us on the west bound, barge on our side in a blind turn. Had to gun it and aim for the port bank, completely opposite of our side and right of way. Rack was holding on with a Q-Beam, beaming the bank as I was glued on the bow of the tug - looming down on us.



                            Closest I've come to getting plowed over......night time running.
                            Muy grande pucker factor!

                            Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

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                              #59
                              Anybody know how bad the bay is still tore up around Aransas pass to corpus. Supposed to go on a guided trip on Wednesday. Trying to find out if I should just lose my 200 buck deposit or go and try

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                                #60
                                Once the wind drops it only takes a day or so for the water to clear back up. Usually even less time than that. I don't know about down there but the wind here dropped yesterday and dropped even more today.

                                Call your guide and see what he thinks but if it were me I'd go fish.

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