Sport Boat Sinks off San Diego

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lwarden

lwarden

Guru
Joined
Jun 5, 2020
Messages
663
Location
San Diego
Vessel Name
North Star
Vessel Make
Lindell 36
The sport boat Jig Strike sinks near the Cortez bank off San Diego over the weekend.

All POB were rescued by a nearby boat and everyone is ok.

Jig Strike sinks at Cortes Bank | Western Outdoor News

wonews.com wonews.com

Reports are they hit something, but it was pretty rough and this is an older boat so who knows. One video taken on the Legend who assisted in the rescue showed a floating section of the hull skin which looked to be around 2'X12' so it clearly had a serious structural failure. I have a friend who was on a boat that pulled into the scene and the reports are the captain did a great job getting everyone off safely.

 
Sure hate to see something like this happen.
 
All passengers were rescued. Cap'n reports hitting something under the surface while underway.

 
They supposedly struck something under the surface. It looks like it was a pretty hard impact, given the debris in the video, but it looks like pretty deep water in the video, so a rock seems unlikely. I wonder if it could have been a whale strike.
 
If they did hit something it would likely be a shipping container.
 
<<whale strike?>>

or zombie shipping container
 
Comodave said:
There are a lot of them out there, never thought about the zombie angle though…
Click to expand...
Shouldn’t there be some kind of regulation banning the use of shipping containers to transport zombies? Who do I contact about this?
 
There were a lot of boats in the area. If it were a container it would likely have been spotted.
This is a glass over ply boat and is quite old so it's possible it just let go with the heavy weather.
 
lwarden said:
There were a lot of boats in the area. If it were a container it would likely have been spotted.
This is a glass over ply boat and is quite old so it's possible it just let go with the heavy weather.
Click to expand...
Some containers float with just a tiny bit of a corner above water and if not a perfectly calm day may be very hard to spot even just a hundred or so yards away.

Containers are known for ripping hulls wide open if hit at any speed.
 
Jklotz said:
Can a log get swept out that far?
Click to expand...
Quite possibly. As dawn broke one morning, I realized that I had been motor-sailing through a debris field of dozens of timbers, barely awash, out in the Gulf of Mexico, about 80 nm off the lower west coast of Florida. My best guess was they were some vessel's deck cargo that came loose. Any one of them could have done serious damage to my sailboat's fiberglass hull, if it struck just right. I motored cautiously through the floating forest and reported it to the CG, but honestly, what was anyone going to about them? They had no apparent salvage value, and recovering them would have taken a lot of effort, even with the right equipment. That far offshore, who was going to mobilize and go looking for them?

The F/V Jig Strike could have struck anything, and if it hit in the right place at the right angle, bingo.

In the video it looked like Jig Strike's main engine was still idling in neutral. The wet exhaust at the stern was coughing up a stream of water about every six or so seconds, so likely not a bilge pump. Even though she was way down at the bow, apparently the engine compartment was still dry enough that the engine continued running.
 
Glad everyone is OK. We'll probably never know what really happened. It certainly could have been almost anything, floating just at the surface and hard to see. We've all been there. One time I saw a refrigerator floating. Between the weight of all the metal, and the floatation of all the foam, it was barely visible.

That said, there is another possibility. On a long, routine transit it's easy to become distracted or complacent. I grew up navigating New England waters, where looking away for more than a moment or two virtually guarantees snagging a lobster buoy. So the habit of always keeping a sharp lookout is deeply engrained in me. I'm often surprised at how uncommon this practice is in other areas. Even around here the operators of larger, steel fishing boats which are not at the same risk from buoys or small debris don't seem to look out the window as often as you'd think. Boats have collided in broad daylight and unlimited visibility.

So, hitting something you "didn't see" could mean it wasn't visible, or it could mean you weren't looking. Just sayin'
 
A few weeks ago watched Redford in "All is Lost" so read up on shipping containers. good article in Yachting World May 17, 2017 titled:

"Could a floating shipping container sink your yacht? How real is the danger?"​

Study explains, once below the surface they will sink fairly quickly however, “it could be just a couple of inches above the surface, and if it’s filled with the right amount of polystyrene, it could stay there forever."
 
Keep in mind, this boat was glass over plywood, built in the 1950s. The San Diego fishing fleet is very old and as lived far past it's intended life. These boats were built by Ditmore Donaldson, Drake, Seaway and others at various levels of quality, some were plank, some glass over ply. Several have gone down or burned over the years. I worked as a deckhand on a couple of these in the 70's and they were showing signs of age even back then. I ran a Drake for a while in the 80's and worried more than once about busting the bottom out of it when coming out of the Mission Bay channel when it was rough.

My guess is this was structural failure from hitting a wave and not striking an object. Unlikely the bow would come apart like that from hitting a log, that would just bust out the plywood at the waterline and not blow the entire bow apart.
 
Last edited:
Let’s blame it ona Russian submarine
 
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