Stay in the Channel!

     Or, Why aren't we moving?

April 23, 2013

    “You got to be careful if you don't know where
you're going, because you might not get there.”

Yogi Berra

Staying in the channel can be trickier than it sounds. Basically, it means staying between the red and green markers, but channels are twisty, winding, and fickle. Mother Nature really doesn’t care what your chart says when she’s playing in the sandbox and moving the bottom under your boat around into big bumps that like to play tag with your keel.

See the photograph below. No zoom was used; those birds were sitting about 15 feet to the port of my boat. Where my boat was in the channel, the water depth read as 19 ft. These birds are sitting on what remains of a wooden boat that burned to the water line, leaving only some wooden ribs sticking out of the water. I’ve seen those ribs at low tide, and they aren’t more than three feet high. The point? Sometimes very shallow water is very close to the channel or deep water you’re in, something you can’t always predict by looking at the water. Water and sand are shifty things.

Moreover, channels often are not straight. They’re not highways. They’re dredged out based on how the water moves the bottom around. There will be bends, sometimes extreme, in most channels. When the channel runs through very shallow water, as this one does (it runs along west side of the Skyway Bridge, which crosses Tampa Bay), straying even a little outside the channel can result in a severe grounding.

Until you’re very comfortable with the process of spotting channel markers and comparing them to your charts, have a second person spotting them also. The channel markers in front of you and behind you should line up in a straight line (red in line with red and green in line with green, and on the same line with your boat), with you moving parallel to and inside those lines. Do that, and you will know to turn the boat when the channel bends.

Take a look at the markers below.  See the slight tilt to the green one? If you look at the horizon, you’ll see that it … leans a little. That marker  probably did some damage to the boat that it hit (notice I always blame the channel marker and not the boater.) By the way, don’t put the exact location of channel markers in your chart plotter, because then your chart plotter will plot a collision course for you. Save a point near the channel marker, inside the channel. That way your chart plotter won’t lead you out of the channel, either.

When I was test sailing the boat I have now, a broker was at the wheel while returning to the marina. She had a green marker to her left, and a red marker to her right. She steered the boat to the right of the red marker, and we didn’t go two feet before we were aground.

Finally, if you’re in an unfamiliar channel, get on the radio and call to other boaters. You may find out that an important marker was recently knocked down, or that a marker needs to be moved but hasn’t been yet, and that at a certain point it’s important to hug one side of the channel or the other. Sweep widely with your eyes as you look for markers, as channels make big turns sometimes – but make sure that the channel marker you have spotted is for your channel and not a different one. And importantly, both charts and chart plotters can be out of date.

LESSON LEARNED: motoring (or sailing) through a channel isn’t like driving on the highway. There are no lane markers, and roads follow more predictable paths than channels do. Keep your eyes open and have more than one pair of eyes on watch.

Finally, see the red buoy below. It is also a channel marker. This is a "floating buoy." They can be red or green. You may be able to see the “10” on this one. As you can see, there’s some very shallow water just beyond it. In this channel, both red marker #8 and red marker #12 are further east than this one is. This one is movable, and has been placed there because the bottom is shifting significantly in this area. In this stretch of the channel, the boater has to line her boat up with the green markers (#9 and #11), which will be in a straight line. This buoy is at a narrowing of the channel.

 

Local knowledge can be very important. The locals all know about this buoy, but you, being new to the area, do not. What if you’re moving by night? You of course have someone with a nice, bright spotlight looking for markers –- 4 – 6 feet above the water (in fact you really must have someone on your spotlight when negotiating a channel at night.) You could both easily overlook this marker … and get really stuck in the dark. Your chart plotter would say you were in the channel, and so would your paper chart. Try explaining that to the sand your keel is stuck in. (Be careful, because those spotlights can drain batteries pretty quickly. You probably shouldn't sail through an unknown channel at night anyway -- turn the engine on.)

Shine that spotlight across the surface of the water as well as at typical marker height. It can be really hard work to spot for channel markers, but don’t just rely on your charts or chart plotters. Using a spotlight is the best way to make sure that neither a channel marker nor a high spot on the bottom jump out at your boat in the dark.