WHY BOATS SINK: Things that go bump in the night!

I was sitting on a beach chair out on the eastern end of the Isle of Long staring out into the Atlantic about two weeks ago. About fifty feet away from where I was sitting was this:

It was part of a tree about thirty five feet long that was partially buried at the high tide mark another 12 foot piece of the same tree was lying a few feet away. It looked pretty nasty down by the root end:

As thought about the tree and wondered where it came from. I was thinking it is probably a traveler left over from Hurricane Sandy's vist to the area last fall:

I wondered how many other tree trunks were floating out there in the Atlantic vagabond leftovers from the storm? Depending on  the boats construction and how it hits such a piece of debris it could severely damage a boat or maybe damage a prop. It would be hard to see to especially at night. Just another thing to be aware of out on the waters. Coincidently, the tree was located at almost the exact spot that I saw an immense log rolling around in the surf a few years ago. Here is some video of that hull crusher I took with a cell phone:


As I sat back down in my beach chair I made a mental note myself to remember even on a beautiful sailing day there are still things lurking just below the surface that could ruin your day.

ADRIFT

A number of years ago I read the book  Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea by Steve Callahan. A sailor who was sailing across the Atlantic when one night he awoke to find his boat sinking. He had just a few minutes to get into the life raft he had on board and spent the next several months at sea before being rescued. He never did find out what his boat had hit that caused his boat to sink. On a online cruising forum in a discussion of why boats sink I read this:

"When we were in the river system off Brazil ... we had huge logs coming down at speed ... river was doing about 5 knots ... if one of those hit us..." 

 I was reminded of something I saw on the beach of eastern Long Island a few years ago. A large eight foot long log had washed up on the beach and was rolling around in the surf. It look like Mahogany or some other exotic tropical wood. As it rolled around in the surf I wondered how far it had journeyed before it landed on the beach. Perhaps as far away as Brazil.