NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: QE2 grounding
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2001 Sep 05, 11:04 PM
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2001 Sep 05, 11:04 PM
At 08:36 AM 8/30/2001 -0400, Rick Emerson wrote: >Thanks, Russell, for the article. Looking at chart 13218 "Martha's >Vinyard to Block Island" (1:80000), venturing in as close 2.5 miles of >Cuttyhunk seems like a problem looking to happen even if Rude Rock >wasn't known. Sow and Pigs Reef (extending roughly SW from Cuttyhunk) >and an area up to about 3 miles south of there is marked as "Rk" and >"Blds" and further marked by a bell off Sow and Pigs and a whistle >SSE of that light (near rocks marked as 31 and 33 feet). Not a place >to bet the boat on... The QE2 was well south of Sow and Pigs, in an area which was charted as having at least 40' of water. The problem is that the depths were from a survey done in the 1930s (as I recollect, looked for survey dates on 1210TR but couldn't find them). While a depth sounder was likely used, it only scanned beneath the survey ship and apparently none of the survey lines crossed Rude Rock. Today's surveys are done with side-scanning sonar giving a picture of features across a wide swath of the bottom. Lu Abel