55' Hatt sunk 53 miles off of Port St. Joe

[GJH]

I would also lay money at very short odds that the autopilot was engaged as well. People hit day markers and other boats that happen to be sitting on a way point.

[whaler23]

Link to the article

http://www.wjhg.com/news/headlines/P...9.html?ref=199

[lumina]

Hi All,

After googling the boat it looks like a boat that has been aggressively for sale for several months with several substantial price reductions.

All the angles etc make sense now comparing the underway pictures to the underwater pictures.

[saltshaker]

Take a look at Willy's post. Those things are huge and if he hit one of those at speed, it would put a nice hole in the hull. What a shame to see a Hatt go down. That boat had been for sale for over ahead and finally found a new owner.

[jim rosenthal]

It looks a nice boat in the photos. It IS a shame. Glad no one was lost, it's bad enough as is.

[Freeebird]

http://www.wjhg.com/news/headlines/P...9.html?ref=199

So it was a rogue buoy. Interesting they listed it as a charter boat vs one that was being taken home newly purchased. Wonder if anybody had reported that buoy as MIA.

[Paul45c]

Hey, all. As an owner of another 55c, this story really hurt to see. But it gets even closer than that, for me -- one of the crew is one of my best friends.

Happened about an hour before dawn, and Chris was snoring away in the fwd cabin when he was awakened with what sounded like a cannon shot. His bunk was probably just a few feet over the site of the impact. By the time he shot up (and probably rung his bell on the bunk right above) and got his feet on the cabin sole, there was already water over that fwd hatch. Nice way to wake up, eh?!

As you can imagine, there wasn't time for damage control or any hope of saving her...he and one other crew or passenger, I think, just grabbed what they could and got up on deck and joined the active crew. And give that whole crew an A+ for prep, because they had all the kind of safety gear you'd want very well-organized in a big ditch bag, AND THEY USED EVERY ELEMENT OF IT -- EPIRB, satphone, port. VHF, flare kits, dye markers, non-perishable food, water, blanket, etc. And of course the quick-inflate 6-pers life raft. That's what Chris really stressed to me...you know that @#$t can happen the water, but how many of us are truly that well set up ALL the time when we get well offshore? I would guess the ones who do it regularly are probably more in the habit, but coming through something like this will make any one of us a better skipper where safety is concerned. He's a very cautious and skilled captain (though in this particular case he was off-duty), and this has ratcheted his level of safety-awareness and prep up another notch or two.

As for the cause, they struck a really large mostly-submerged steel or iron float of some kind. If I heard it right, it's something meant to be like a mooring ball for the oil-service vessels that take care of the rigs. Most of them have short masts on them with a radar reflector, and usually show pretty well on radar. Not sure if this one was missing that all-important piece, but there were two guys at the helm chairs with the radar on and they never saw anything. And they were only going about 9.5 kts. But, it was o-dark-hundred and you sure couldn't trust your eyes then. If the radar missed it, or the crew were fatigued enough just not to notice that little dot getting closer, well...sucks to run at night.

Chris was along because he'd been doing a fair bit of maintenance on her, and the new owner (pretty serious charter fisherman out of Alabama with a lot of time on SF's) wanted his familiarity with the boat for that run from Lauderdale and thought it was money well spent to bring him. The boat wasn't perfect (cosmetic issues, more than anything), but mechanically it was pretty high and tight.

Amazingly, it never sank -- at least while Chris was bobbing alongside in the raft; she just capsized and hung there. Took about 45 mins to turn turtle, too. I would have thought she'd go down pretty quickly, myself.

I'm just glad my friend came though this one a-OK. I try to purge the mental images of him in his tidy-whities with eyes all bugged out (he's sort of a large fellow) in the dark and wet, but still happy he's OK!

[rsmith]

We came across a large bell bouy floating halfway between Mattanilla and FtPierce in almost 4000 ft of water. We caught a ton of Mahi under the thing. Called the CG and reported it as a hazard seemed like they could care less. The thing was drifting north at almost 3 knots. Fishing out of Ft Pierce the Gulfstream is like a debris highway coming up from points south. Ive seen telephone poles, entire trees,even a sealand container once floating right at the surface. When you think about it all the stuff that comes from China is packed in styrofoam so theres a good chance if one falls off a ship it will float.

[Genesis]

Sounds like just bad luck.

I came VERY close to hitting a submerged container in my little boat a few years ago - it went by off the beam a couple of feet away. Never saw it until we passed it; it was nearly-identical in color to the water and this was in the middle of the day! If we had hit that we would have been totally screwed; I suspect it would have torn both engines right off the back of the boat - if we were lucky and didn't hole the hull.

Stuff like this happens.... if there's nothing sticking up out of the water radar is worthless and it doesn't have to be nighttime to be a problem.

[spartonboat1]

We came across a large bell bouy floating halfway between Mattanilla and FtPierce in almost 4000 ft of water. We caught a ton of Mahi under the thing. Called the CG and reported it as a hazard seemed like they could care less.

You should have reported that it seemed to be leaking lube oil and diesel...that seems to make them freak out and respond in a hurry.