When will it be safe to go boating in NY/NJ?

[saltshaker]

A few boaters have started to venture off and many are running into problems. Last night I was talking to a friend who knew a guy who seriously damaged his boat last week when he hit a sunken car in Barnegat Bay. Others are having problems with channels being shoaled up and markers being off station or missing completely. Given the amount of debris that was washed into the water, it'll be a while before I'm willing to venture out. A few days after Sandy, a dock neighbor of mine saw a sunken Chevy Suburban that's nearly completely submerged just before the Sea Bright Bridge. Last I heard there are nearly 15,000 boats that are unaccounted for in NJ alone. Clean up and rebuilding has been a slow process. Many are still waiting for insurance payments and trying to determine how to build among the wreckage. A lot of these homes are very close together and it's tough to build a new house when the house next door is destroyed and not yet torn down. In Sea Bright NJ 85% of the homes are uninhabitable and need to be rebuilt or torn down. Residents are also being told they need to raise their houses 6ft. Not an easy task when the houses are old, and only a few feet between them.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/subme...eatens-tourism

[Dan Mapes]

I thought this was going to be a discussion about poor seamanship or crime. I think this should have been titled "When will it be less dangerous".

[bostonhatteras]

15000 boats is an awesome number (True meaning of the word). That really puts a perspective on conditions down there. I would think the army corp of engineers isnt really set up to do or contract out emergency dredging operations. the more commercially utilized channels will be first thats for sure. Theres no way to remove a chevy suburban with a united effort by the local yacht club but maybe that effort could be in locating them. similar to the real back water tributaries where a stick with flag is planted in the middle of the channel. maybe attaching markers to the obstructions. time to take out the tenders and a powerful light and look into the water along your local channels. put a big pvc tube on the spotlight so the tube can be in the water and the light a couple feet out of the water. just a thought. sorry to hear you still got it so rough down there.

[rsmith]

After Frances there was a 58 bertram that was at the Ft Pierce city marina that was never found. Last someone saw it it was half submerged drifting under So bridge. You do have to wonder where all the stuff goes.

[saltshaker]

After Frances there was a 58 bertram that was at the Ft Pierce city marina that was never found. Last someone saw it it was half submerged drifting under So bridge. You do have to wonder where all the stuff goes.

You've been through a number of bad storms. How common is it for boats to hit debris a while after the storm? Problem here is we aren't used to dealing with these storms and the surge was so high that there was a ton of debris that ended up in the water. I'm not as concerned about the ocean it's just getting in and out. We were planning to take a few trips North in July but we're going to wait to see what things look like. I can't see how these towns can be back in business for the summer. Many are still rebuilding infrastructure let alone businesses getting up and running.

[bigbill]

jack, it took several years to clean all of the debris left from katrina. the govt. sent a contractor to clean the rivers and bayous around my area. the came in with a long stick trackhoe.....that didn't work, they couldn't feel the debris with the machine, so they were guessing.. then the coast guard cam in and did sidescan sonar, and asked for locals to help identify obstructions and report them. this time it turned out pretty good. this also made some areas deeper which helped a lot.
after katrina, we went very slow until we knew we were in deep water. a slow hit is better than a fast hit. the joke when we hit something once in bay st. louis was that i hit my girlfriends living room furniture. (her house was gone and never found)
as for boats never found. one of my previous boats, a 1972 pacemaker 38 was never found. the owner at the time of katrina swears that it was stolen.

[saltshaker]

jack, it took several years to clean all of the debris left from katrina. the govt. sent a contractor to clean the rivers and bayous around my area. the came in with a long stick trackhoe.....that didn't work, they couldn't feel the debris with the machine, so they were guessing.. then the coast guard cam in and did sidescan sonar, and asked for locals to help identify obstructions and report them. this time it turned out pretty good. this also made some areas deeper which helped a lot.
after katrina, we went very slow until we knew we were in deep water. a slow hit is better than a fast hit. the joke when we hit something once in bay st. louis was that i hit my girlfriends living room furniture. (her house was gone and never found)
as for boats never found. one of my previous boats, a 1972 pacemaker 38 was never found. the owner at the time of katrina swears that it was stolen.

That's what I've been thinking. I'll let others find the snags in the channel early in the season. I figured as time goes on, there will be a lot of Clorox bottles marking the bigger stuff and the channel markers will get moved accordingly. I'm a bit concerned about crossing the bay and heading into NY harbor. The bay is wide open but not terribly deep. Most of it is 15-25ft deep so big debris can be anywhere. This is the area that had the most surge and damage so a lot of debris got washed into the bay. I think the ocean will be fine as long as I stay a few miles off the beach. You can run pretty close to the beach here but I like to stay about 5 miles or so out. Less traffic and hopefully less chance of finding someones missing house.

[sandspur1966]

Jack-

Haven't been too far down the North River but I have been out in the western LI Sound and down to the Statue, all deep water I know, but didn't see anything remarkable.

I was out in the Great South Bay both right after the storm and a few times since including this past weekend. It is wide and shallow and the barrier beach similar to your shore was over washed in several locations. Lots of markers gone but didn't see any unusual obstructions.

[saltshaker]

Jack-

Haven't been too far down the North River but I have been out in the western LI Sound and down to the Statue, all deep water I know, but didn't see anything remarkable.

I was out in the Great South Bay both right after the storm and a few times since including this past weekend. It is wide and shallow and the barrier beach similar to your shore was over washed in several locations. Lots of markers gone but didn't see any unusual obstructions.

I was out on a friends 20ft CC a week after the storm. There were sunken and beached boats everywhere. We have a lot or small marsh islands here and they all had at least 6 or 7 boats on them. We've had wooden steps, pieces of docks, furniture, dock boxes, a tire and even a freezer full of food drift into the marina. We're going to have a team of divers sweep the basin for sunken debris. I know there's at least one dock box and some deck chairs down there. You can see some of the stuff during low tide. And that's just what's in our basin. The marina next to us had many of their docks destroyed and every boat that was on land floated off. Most sank in the river or ended up on top of the docks. Some were found a few miles away either on an island or in someone's back yard.

[Avenger]

I was talking with one of the locals who had been out on the Great South Bay after the storm and he indicated that there was a lot of debris where there were transitions from deep to shallow water. Things floating out in the flood that came back on the return tide and fetched up when they got in the shallows.

I think I'm going to start the season a little late and go slow in the bay for a while.