We all make mistakes
 

I woke up this morning to this view looking out over the beautiful waters in Hudson, FL. Talk about high and dry. Yes, the boat is resting on its keel. The skipper missed the channel by about three football fields in length. The waters are shallow around here during low tide so staying in the channel is a must. Everyone will get a good view of his miscalculation for about another 4 hours or until the waters are deep enough for him to move on. :)

Please don't fly your plane in a similar manner:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

Is it entirely out of the water and standing on its keel? How does it not fall over?

Sailboat
 

It’s probably a English made sail boat with twin keels.

Same reason an aircraft carrier in drydock does not...it is balanced.

Women driver? Written by someone else of course.

Boating Wisdom
 

"Wisdom comes from Experience and in Boating, Experience comes from Bad Experience". That skipper hopefully will not make that mistake again. Hopefully.

Been there done that with our pontoon boat. thank god we had enough food and water on board to wait for the tide to come. I am from MN and did not realize how fast the water retreats when you beach your pontoon!

I grew up in CT, on Long Island Sound. Our family had a boat. My father let me steer the boat and I did exactly what the skipper in the photo did. I will never forget the look on my father's face. He was not happy.

Sounds like you might have been at Clinton Harbour Marina area

Interesting photo. Surprised the boat doesn't keel over.

I missed a channel once, at night, when one of the channel marker navigation lights was burned out. Headed for the next channel marker light without checking the heading and cut across a bend in the channel. Oops. In that case, though, I had a retractable keel and was able to push through the mud to get back in the channel. Freaked out my daughter.

I had an old William Atkin trunk-cabin cruiser with a keel. Late one Friday night, I got out of the channel and ran aground as the tide was ebbing. Couldn't back off. We and our guests decided to have some refreshments and wait overnight for the incoming tide. Meanwhile, we didn't realize how far the water had receded and we were delicately balanced on the keel. One of us stood up and moved, throwing the balance off. The boat rolled. It scared the living daylights out of us.

Good ballast??

Nope...

"When the ship enters a dry dock, it must have a positive metacentric height; and is usually trimmed by stern. The floor of the dry dock is lined with keel blocks, which are so arranged such that they can bear the weight of the ship."

The keel was probably buried deep enough in the muck to hold the boat upright...

Sailboats are usually quite "keel heavy", in order to counteract the lateral forces from the wind against the sails...

I would think that the sailboat might have a wing keel as my Catalina 250 does. My wife took this picture today of another boater in trouble. He is outside pushing his boat off of the bottom to free it. :) I can't leave the slip as my keel will scrape the bottom even in the channel until the tide height is 2 feet above low tide.

We had an S-2 in Ohio with a similar-looking keel. The weight in the bottom makes it more stable.

I did this once with a 300 foot gas/heating oil tanker entering east rockaway inlet, long island in 1987, when we were just a tad late on the falling tide.

it happens even to professionals in the shallow coastal channels.

Maybe so. It was so long ago I don't remember. I mostly remember the look on my father's face, and it was a long wait for the tide to come up.

I docked a Old Harbor Marina, Clinton.
On beach days at low tide we could walk to the edge of the channel in ankle-deep water I believe the dredged channel was 30ft wide and 8 ft deep at low tide, High tide would give you about 4.5 to 5 feet more depth

Yup. I went to junior high and high school in Hudson, Fla. My dad always had to gaged when he could go out due to high and low tides. Often had to stay out and wait to get back home.