Posted: Sept. 20, 2010
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By Bill Dipaolo Palm Beach Post
Posted: Sept. 20, 2010
The turquoise runway to the Atlantic Ocean looks inviting, but the Jupiter Inlet can be deadly.
Charter boat Capt. Thomas Henry, a former airline pilot with three decades of boating experience, is its latest fatality.
On Sept. 3, Henry, 61, was in his 51-foot fishing boat, the Waterdog, near the inlet when his boat hit a wave and he was tossed into the ocean.
Lifeguards pulled him from the water, but he died three days later at St. Mary's Medical Center.
"You stand here, and it looks so beautiful," said charter boat captain Tony Matarese, standing on the wooden dock at Seasport Marina lined with fishing boats. "But believe me, it gets hairy out there."
The 400-foot-wide Jupiter Inlet, along with the St. Lucie, Lake Worth, Boynton and Boca Raton inlets, are some of the local paths for boaters to get to and from the Atlantic Ocean. Each inlet is tough for boaters, but of those four, Jupiter Inlet is the most difficult, said David Lill, Palm Beach County's aquatic director for parks and recreation.
"Jupiter gets the big surf breaking in the mouth of the inlet. You got shallow sandbars shifting around. There's the angle of the waves. When the tide is running out and the big swells are coming in, it's rough. You can be hanging on for dear life out there," said Lill.
What causes the danger is the buildup of sand -- shoaling -- about 1,300 feet offshore from the inlet.
The flow from the Loxahatchee River emptying into the Atlantic Ocean pushes out to the sand, building the crescent-shaped shoal about 5 feet deep, making for unpredictable waves.
Henry was returning over that shoal from a fishing trip with two parents, two children, their grandmother and a deckhand in 8-foot swells with a light chop under a clear sky.
He approached the inlet from the southeast. Standard procedure is to ride the rear of a swell as the boat passes over the sandbar. Somehow, the Waterdog got on top of the swell. The 10-ton craft came hurtling down.
"It's called pitchpoling. You come down the wave and shear to the right or left. The boat rolled on its side. He was tossed," said Chad Meeks, a Waterdog deckhand who was not aboard when the accident occurred. Nobody else was injured.
Since 1998, at least ten people have drowned in boating and swimming accidents in the Jupiter Inlet, two in or near the Boca Raton Inlet, and one in the St. Lucie Inlet, according to the U.S. Coast Guard and figures complied by The Palm Beach Post.
Each of the inlets has its own dangers.
The Boynton Inlet, with strong currents whooshing through its narrow, 130-foot width, doglegs to the right, or starboard, for boaters and jet skiers as they head under A1A and out to sea.
"If a customer wants to head out to the ocean, we go with them first and show them how. We only let them go out to the ocean on really calm days," said Marcelo Juchem, owner of Boynton Beach Boat Rentals Inc. Shifting sandbars also make the Boca Raton Inlet dangerous for inexperienced boaters. Some are as close as 30 feet to the inlet near the pink Boca Raton Hotel.
The Lake Worth Inlet, entry way to the Port of Palm Beach, is the deepest of all the local inlets at 32 feet. It typically is crowded with the 557-foot MS Bahamas Celebration cruise ship, Peanut Island revelers, fishing boats and cargo ships heading to and from the port.
As with the Jupiter Inlet, boaters in the St. Lucie Inlet must be wary of heavy sandbar buildup -- shoaling -- at the meeting point of the Intracoastal Waterway, Indian and St. Lucie rivers.
"If you go outside that channel, it's easy to run aground," said Phil Tollman, a boat captain for Riviera Beach-based Seatow.
On an average weekend, the boat-rescue company services about 40 boats in distress in the area. About half are in and around Lake Worth Inlet. Jupiter Inlet gets the next largest amount of distress calls, Tollman said.
The common suggestion by boaters to reduce the danger at the Jupiter Inlet is to widen the entrance, which they say would make entry and exit easier.
If only it were that simple, said Tom Howard, a commissioner of the Jupiter Inlet District, the elected taxing authority that maintains the inlet.
Widening would increase salt-water intrusion upstream into the Loxahatchee River. That would destroy cypress trees and ruin the juvenile nesting areas for snook, jack and snapper.
Another result of any widening would be additional beach erosion south of the inlet, he said. Plus, the district would have to buy private land on both sides on the inlet.
"Widening the inlet would devastate the local environment. And we likely wouldn't get a permit if we applied for one," said Howard.
Staff Researchers Michelle Quigley and Niels Heimeriks contributed to this story.
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