Cocktails Grounded in Woods Hole

I know that boat if it's the same "Cocktails". 97' Hargrave, been for sale for a while now, last asking around 5,000,000 as I recall. Berths at Fisher Island in Miami a lot. Used to see it in St. Thomas for the winter season. It was/is for charter.

Bummer. Hope no one was hurt. Sounds like the captain did the right thing and got it on the beach before it was to late.

I grew up around there... looks like he took the "local's shortcut" and lost. If I recall its a small bar just before Nobska coming out of the Hole, with lots of water but a few serious hazards (rocks), current but nothing like in Woods Hole itself... usually folks get in trouble where the currents are stronger...

Here is some video.

http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/i...lti-million-dollar-yacht-runs-aground?blog=53

I go thru Woods Hole a few times each summer; taking a "local's shortcut" around WH with a 100 footer? makes you shake your head, doesn't it? I dont' even see anything on the chart that would tempt me... there are 2 entries on the Sound side of WH, both are well marked and easy to run. did he try cutting inside R2 at Nobska? Short of mechanical failure i just don't see how an experienced skipper can find rocks thru WH

must have happened late friday afternoon, we left Cutty for Newport around mid day and didn't hear anything on 16

ALthough that's not my home ground I too have been through there many times, found it well marked and was wondering the exact same thing. So I also pulled out my chart. If he was coming down from Vinyard Sound, came off the 20 and went straight for the 4 he'd be in big trouble. Otherwise, even if he shortcut the 2 by a bit he'd be fine. Can't imagine mechanical trouble since he was able to beach her and if his instruments went down there's charts and eyes. The cap wisely beached her, but he may have some explaining to do about how he got the hole.

In the back ground of the picture in the story you can see a red and a green buoy. If he's on the beach at Nobska, I'd say those are R6 and G7 for the channel into the CG station. My guess is he either cut on the wrong side of R20, or more likely got pushed/pulled over on the wrong side and clipped the rocks there and then headed for the section of beach off Nobska Pond that is free of obstructions.

DK about the wrong side of 20 theory. That one's pretty obvious given its proximity to the coast, and even if he did but continued heading for the 2 he'd be in OK water if he weren't way outside it towards shore. I'd say more likely that he missed the 2 completely and was heading off the 20 to the 4 or that he got confused with the buoys where the two channels almost meet coming from the other direction. Either way, I doubt he found a rock in the channel. So he'll have that uncomfortable question (What were you doing there?) to answer.

If you draw a straight line from the #20 to the #4 there appears to be a shallow spot along that course just passed the #20 and just to the N of the line there are charted rocks.

Or if you line up on the #6 instead of the #4 there are even more charted rocks to hit.

So I'm guessing he may have tried to cut the corner, cut inside of the #2 as you mentioned, and clipped the rocks near the #20 one way or the other.

From the look of things I'd guess that he made a mistake and missed the 2 buoy or got confused at the shortcut where you can cross from one channel to the other, more than that he tried to shortcut the 2. That would just be stupid to do. So many times though I see people taking buoys on the wrong side or shortcutting an inlet entrance to save from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. I always hope that they're locals who know the area well, but often it's not. I'm just always afraid of being asked the question "Why did you do that?" and having no good answer. Anybody can make a mistake, miss seeing a buoy or confusing one for the other. You just never want to have to respond with: "Because I was intentionally being stupid and wreckless." Obviously this captain was knowledgable enough to know where to stick the boat in one of the few spots on that coastline without rocks. I think he probably just made a mistake. We all know Murphy from Murphy's Law. The one time you screw up, he's bound to stick a rock there to compound it.

Do any of the larger yachts use forward scan sonar with alarms? It would seem to me that it would be worth the money on these larger yachts. It seems it just takes one mistake to seriously damage a boat and a career. Those systems aren't that expensive so that can't be the issue.

They tend not to be all that accurate and helpful, and in this instance the channels are well marked.

We have one on board. I find it is accurate. But in shallow water you need to be going slow to get much warning.

Great for poking around dirty shallow water, slowly.

Bill, which one do you have?

I ve had interphase on my own boat,?one I installed new, and one that came with boat, and found them pretty useless as they can only see ahead 5 to 7 times tje depth or so. In 8' you can see about 60' ahead... Barely past the bow

This accident is odd... I came thru WH today and noticed that while R20 is pretty small R2 on the other hand is a big buoy! No way someone can not see it and head straight for R4

Current was ripping, about 3kt... There was a small sailboat motoring behind me (coming from BUzzards to vineyard) who didn't turn in early enough and ended up outside of the channel inthe triangle by Red ledge. He was ablest come back by pointing directly into the current...

Interphase SE-200

Works fine. But as you note it doesn't look very far forward in shallow water. But works good if you need to poke around looking for deeper water, following an unmarked channel or looking for an obstruction.

How about this for a longshot theory: He sees the R2 marking Little Harbor not the main channel for Woodshole. He looks at the chart when he gets there and heads due north (the heading into Woodshole from big R2). That should get you right up on the beach....thoughts?

That would assume that he thought he was on the main channel, and then ignored the buoy he saw ahead of him in favor of heading for the beach and no buoys at all. It also assumes that he was in fact heading north. This was on Friday, a day when boat's are typically heading for the Vinyard to the south. I think we're going to have to wait for the report, beyond saying that he probably made a mistake that got him onto a rock and then did a good job of keeping the boat from sinking.

He didn't run up on the beach by accident. He did it on purpose after hitting a rock.