AICW/Mason Inlet - Click for Chartview

Mason Inlet separates Figure Eight Island and Wrightsville Beach and intersects the Waterway at mile 280.5. SSECN has had a Navigation Alert posted for reports of shoaling at this intersection since August of 2013. See /?p=120325.

On Nov 13, 2013 at approximately 1:00 pm (mid tide) our keel bumped & then slid over shoaling on the “ocean side” of ICW channel very near G121 (Mason Inlet) . Our IP350 sailboat has a draft of 4′ 3″. We were very surprised as we had checked this cruiser site for any problem areas and found no mention of problems in this area.
Jim Murtha

In light of Captain Murtha’s last comment, SSECN would like to remind everyone to always check our Navigation Alerts, which can be reached both via our top of the page menus, and by way of the red, vertically stacked menus on the right side of all (except Chart View) SSECN pages. You can also set a bookmark for /alert-region/010-all-nav-alerts/?sort=date (though, do note that this “ALL Navigation Alerts” page is sorted chronologically by publication date, while the regional Nav. Alert pages (e. g. “EF Nav. Alerts at /alert-region/035-ef-nav-alerts/?sort=geo) are sorted geographically!

Came through Mason Inlet [intersection with ICW] yesterday 2 hrs after low tide. Two boats already grounded near floating green can. Bumped as started through further toward red but grounded and backed off only to bump again. TowboatUS near by came to pull off and led through. Ignore floating green, less than 4 ft of water with rising mid tide. You need to be as close to red side docks as possible then angle back to channel past G23. TowboatUS captain said this location had started shoaling badly 2 days ago.
John Lark

11/19/13 ‘“ We traveled the area AICW at Mason Inlet at MLW. We had 2.9 feet of water under our boat, we draw 5’7’³.
John Sims

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