This report of shoaling concerns a spot in the center of the Waterway channel 3/4 of a mile south of the Bridge of Lions. If you have found similar depths in this area, please let us hear from you.

I dragged my 4’ – 3” draft hard through the mud in Saint Augustine at the spot indicated here which is shown on the chart as 14 feet MLW. This was an hour and a half and 10 inches before MLW. I was heading northbound from the channel over to where a few boats my size and larger were anchored south of the mooring field.
You can see where I made a couple of other attempts to get into the mooring field and up to the anchorage but was running out of depth fast enough not to want to try it.
I anchored briefly to write this and wait for slack water to go into the marina dock for fuel at the point where the track ends. There is 9.5 feet of water here where the chart says I should be aground so the charts are not to be relied upon in this area.
Roger S/V Strider

Roger: Your report doesn’t surprise me as I doubt that area has been surveyed in years, but where you reported going aground at the 14-foot spot plots out as much closer to the edge of the shoal on my raster NOAA chart than it looks on your chartlet reproduced here. I know that the bottom rises quickly there from good depths to near nothing. Another odd thing is that someone who I trust just the other day gave me a report of where he anchored in St. Augustine and it plotted out aground on the raster chart. I’m wondering if there is a temporary GPS error issue in that area due to the testing in the Southeast that has been announced though I would have thought St. Augustine is too far away.
John Kettlewell

Click Here To Open A Chart View Window, Zoomed To A “Navigation Alert” Position at Reported Shoaling