Just the other day, a boat came into the bay, it didn't anchor by the rest of the boats, instead it headed up the channel. There is a HUGE (100m x 30m) rock, right in the middle of the channel. It isn't marked on some charts, nor are there buoys. Well he hit it, Hard. Made so much worse, is the ~2-3 kt current running down the channel.
I attached a photo. He had been stuck for about an hour by this time. All on a falling tide... when he started there was 4 feet left of about a 10ft that day, he healed over a lot more. Then the current reversed, and as he started to float, it pushed him higher up the rock. Eventually it drug the keel, scrapping every inch of the way, all the way down the rock.
He was lucky, during spring tides, the rock dries out. He would have suffered serious damage to the hull. There's a good possibility the hull gets compromised and doesn't rise with the tide. ie. the boat sinks.
Note that the keel didn't fall off! He suffered massive gouges to the bottom of the keel. But, the integrity of the hull held up. From a stress point, this was much worse that hitting a soft shoal. He said the grinding, scrapping, banging, as the boat turned sideways to the current and was pinned down and drug along the rock was the worst thing he's had to experience. He has been blue water sailing for 25 years.
