The Don't Rock Passage today.

mixman

mixman

Livin' the life.
Member
Joined
Feb 28, 2007
RO Number
25362
Messages
3,996
Don't try this with any sort of draft!

There was no report from The Whale on Cruiser's Net today:

Whale Cay Passage: [No Report]
North MOW: per Susan at 808am at Penrod Point reports 3-5ft roll / 1ft chop / sloppy

Man-O-War sounded interesting. We took a shot through the Don't Rock.

Boat+1.jpg


The water got VERY skinny at times between the rollers. The depth sounder couldn't even get a reading, but I could sure see the sand below. And then came the breakers.

Breaker+1.jpg


Breaker+2.jpg


Breaker+3.jpg


See how close that sand bottom was? Yikes! It's a good thing we've got a shallow-draft boat.

At least we weren't out in the Whale Passage like this sail boat:

Whale+2.jpg


For those that haven't been through these passages, the white water on the left is breaking against a reef. It had to be rough out there.

I'll work on a movie tonight from some video I shot and see what I can edit together. It's hard to steer with one hand and take a movie with the other under such conditions (but it was fun :-)
 
We've had reports that Dont Rock has 6 feet of water all the way and in spite of that we have never felt like trying it, especially when it's stirred up. A two foot wave takes 1/3 of the water away! For us, running the Whale is a matter of waiting for decent weather and slack tide. If you have GPS tracks they would be interesting to see!
 
Purple are routes I plotted over the past few years and the Explorer Chart recommended route built into Garmin devices. Green are actual tracks from our previous passages. White is today's track.

Tracks.jpg


And I agree, I wouldn't recommend any vessel with over a 2' draft try that passage in anything but calm water on high tide. I lead a 34' Monk Trawler through last year on a calm day at high tide. We both read at least 6' all the way. But today, with those conditions, it was getting very, very skinny, especially between the swells.
 
Thank you! Even though we normally travel to Orchid from Green Turtle which makes Dont Rock a bit out of the way, ya never know!
 
We actually just went from Orchid to Leeward YC at GT. It's pretty much a straight shot through the Don't Rock. Wouldn't the Whale actually add miles?
 
Kurt I did a quick plot to double check and they are virtually the same length.

routes.jpg
 
I guess you're right. I was thinking about our friends on the Monk last year saying how many miles it would save them to follow us through the inside. But we were leaving from Treasure, so that makes sense. I'm just thankful we can do the inside. There weren't many people doing the Whale today. No reports, lots of radio traffic to Treasure for slips, and quite a few boats turning around. Too bad they don't dredge the Don't Rock!
 
Indeed. For all the traffic they would generate it would seem like a wise move. Particularly in light of all they have dredged, and continue to dredge on Grand Bahama! But then what we have here is a mentality that attempts to cater to the megayachts when the 40 foot gang is their bread and butter. Either that or they are looking for home owners that boat locally and have no need for passages except perhaps once or twice.
 
Dredging Dont Rock would be a loosing battle I suspect. And who would pay for it?
 
Yeah, it would fill in again with every single storm. A waterway through the big island (like the Lucayan) that would negate the need for Whale or Don't Rock would probably work better. Expensive as heck, but they could probably charge a nice toll. In all honesty, I don't see any such things ever taking place.
 
As promised. Here's the movie of the passage. I wish the camera could do a better job of picking up the swells, but 2D just can't capture 3D images. However, you can tell the boat was running well through it, especially the little breaking swell we hit at around 1:18 into the movie.



(Click image above for movie)
 
I bet you picked up about 15 pounds of salt during that run. Other than that, it didn't look all that bad. :D

Bob
 
You're right on both points. I'm going to now go into competition with Mortons with the salt we scraped off the boat, and yes, it wasn't bad at all. The worst part was being in the troughs and worrying about just how close the bottom was. I'm glad I was smart enough not to try it at low tide!
 
I finished work today on a boat that is waiting for a weather window to take their new boat to Treasure Cay. I told them about your passage at Don't Rock and mentioned that you took video. We all agreed that it could not have been too bad since you took a video while underway. If it was really bad, you would have been too busy to capture it on video. This boat is not going to need too big a weather window because it cruises at 30 kts with 3 300hp Verados.
 
Mark, Kristen thought I was out of my mind for taking the video while at the helm. I had my left hand on the wheel and my right hanging out the side with the camera. My eyes were never on the camera, but rather on the water and the chartplotter. There where some more "interesting" parts I didn't get video of due to the fact that it took both hands on the wheel. But I've been through there when it's a lot worse, so I thought some pics and video this time would be fun. However, we did run into a Gemini 105mc that tried it the same day and turned around. It wasn't pleasent for a slow boat, but if the boat you're talking about does twice our speed, they'd be fine (as long as they don't draw any more than a couple of feet that is).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top