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Originally Posted by Mee-n-Mac
I don't know that I would have chosen these 2 areas, as I understand them, as prime candidates. The Bear/mainland stretch has a NWZ at one end and a channel at the other and is short enough in between that it's no great loss and wouldn't be the "fast route" anyway. That said, it's not unsafe to be "fast" in that stretch so I wonder why, other than it makes a good test zone, it was choosen ? (I could float a good coonspiracy theory  ) |
I suspect the Bear Island route was choosen due to it's narrow end points, and it's high traffic on weekends. Ripping through there at high speeds on a Saturday afternoon is probably dumb. At its widest, just south of the PO and south to the red topped spar off Jerry Point, it's only about 1700 feet wide and that section is only about 2500 feet long. Then it necks down to 700 feet wide or so before it gets even narrower by FL3. There's also the fact that general boat traffic is going to make a beeline from one narrow point to the other in the 2500 foot stretch. Since ther's bi-driectional traffic, this rarely leaves room between northbound and southbound traffic for overtaking to port like we are supposed to. This means overtaking is generally going to happen to starboard which moves the fastest boats closest to the shore, not a good thing in my opinion.
I think the "Rattlesnake" area is really between Sleepers and the shoreline. That's a pretty busy area and there's boatloads of swimmers (literally
), WAM traffic and about 500 feet of navigable "channel" due to spars and the shape of the island and mainland. If that's not where they plan to have a speed limit, well I agree with you, it makes no sense.