We used to water ski in Florida's Escambia River in the 60's. Seems like
anyone who ever caught a fish felt obligated to mark the spot with a stick.
And we ski'd anyway: lucky we never fell and got impaled.
Oh, yeah, we didn't know anything about channel markers then, either. We had
an oar aboard and used it to pole off the mud when we'd run aground, which
was frequently!

"-rick-" wrote in message
...
FREDO wrote:
I just watched a program about the Coast Guard on TV.

A guy with a 40' boat hit an underwater piling and the boat sunk the next
morning.
Everyone got off the boat Ok.

My questions a
Aren't there any channel markers on the Columbia river?

Was this guy just an ignorant boater?

Don't they have channel maps?

IMHO You would think someone with an expensive boat would know a little
more about the place they are boating and not take risks like running WOT
in a shoals area.

I have found that even the little rivers in Indiana I used to run a jon
boat on have many shoals and sandbars and you have to be extremely
careful if you don't know the waters.

Fredo

The guy must have been outside the marked channel as it's ~ 40' deep.
There are lots of wing dams and pilings whose visibility depends on river
level. There are also sunken logs or old pilings that seem to appear and
disappear randomly. Perhaps they angle up in the current or one end
catches on the bottom as they drift downstream. I've often seen a "new"
piling and wondered where it came from. Next week it's gone.

-rick-