for Boggy lake sailors - the last two sessions i've hit something off the reed bank on the opposite shore. both times fully planing then hear/feel a hard clunk from fin region just as the board stops dead.
last week violently catapulted and chipped the nose of my board. when my head cleared i saw a golf-ball sized white float just under the surface with a rope trailing into the murk. no way you'd see that at speed. i think i was just really unlucky to snag it in a biggish lake. perhaps it's lost because how would the owner find it...GPS?
yesterday same thing happened but somehow the catapult missed the board. i could see nothing afterwards that explained it.
back on shore Andreas had hit something unseen as well - his catapult snapped his boom so it seems i've been getting away lightly.
someone said maybe carp - i have seen plenty of fish recently. i don't know what it was but i have sailed those tacks maybe a thousand times in the past year without incident.
then the minute i buy a new board...
Hi Shane,
Did you pull the rope out and chuck it on the bank?
I hit what could only be a big carp(or cod?) years ago at 37 knots and couldn't believe that there weren't 2 halves of a fish floating on the surface. Big catapult with a bent boom, smashed nose and torn finbox. I tracked back to the point of impact expecting to find a fence post but found nothing. They must be quite resilient or if they do die, take a while to float with decomposition.
I think it is a Boggy right of passage...
PS - What was your mind altering substance of choice...
I should've pulled the rope out in retrospect, but the 'pult rattled me hard (my mouth must have been open when i got pile-driven into the water, as i got force fed a nice dose of Boggy special...possibly i was screaming.) in any case I didn't think of it until too late.
if carp are the villains...well, not much we can do except try to stay away from the reedy and shallow sections where they hang out.
I was thinking of trying Boggy Lake out for flat water/speed runs, so I did some researching of potential hazards, read through various posts, looked at the hazards map and also at old satelite photos.
In the process I found something that looks like a fence on the satelite photo from 2009 that may now be under water and it doesn't appear on the hazards map - and it's on the other side of the lake:
(if you look closely, you can spot shadows of at least 11 fence posts all in straight line between the 2 red arrows, plus 2 more out of line with the rest just under the top red arrow)
Sorry, yeah, hahaha that would help....see below - circled with red line... is that by any chance where these accidents are occurring?
can't speak for Andreas, but if you came in 20% from the middle of the right edge of Godfather's map, that's roughly where both my strikes happened (but I'm certain they were in different locations - i'll double check on my GPS).
it seems those stakes are north of the reed islands. it's pretty rare to get the precise direction you need to sail in there, but when you do it's reasonably smooth. i got to sail there once last year and thought it a lot narrower than the picture suggests. i
If you had your GPS on when it happened, you can save just the last few trackpoints before the crash into a separate file and then open that file and do a "Google Earth overlay". It will then show you exactly where it is on Google Earth and you could take a screen dump and post it here.
(if everyone did that we would have preety good idea where the problem spots are and they could be investigated and marked)
Found more posts in the area below, but it's not a fence. They are arranged in a 12m x 2m rectangle, not sure what it is/was:
Looking at the map again....I don't think I have ever seen anyone sail there. I think kiters have gone down there.
My crash was in neck deep water about 100 meters from the island heading back to the car park their is no damage to my fin or board so it must of been a carp I hit one last week as well but it wasn't big enough to stop me. Its pretty crap realising that about $800 worth of carbon was just destroyed by a fish 
Yeah I've sailed the East side channel that runs between the spit and reed banks. Only doable in a Southerly btw. Also sailed the West channel also only accessible in a Southerly doing many km's.. No obvious fence posts but then the water is shallow.
I've suffered the Boggy and main Lake catapults both from fishing nets and or carp. The bigger they are and if hit more square on, then the harder the catapult will be.
There are a crap load of dead carp and live carp in the water atm so odds on the longer the session then....... BTW the closer to any reed bank you sail then your increasing your chances of hitting carp. Again I know:-(
Update->
Things may be about to get worse...
www.adelaidenow.com.au/nocookies?a=A.flavipes
I was at boggy last Sat arvo.
Hit a carp, massive catapult which cracked my board and just about wrecked a decent sail . Found the cuplrit fish, it was almost split in 2, but surprising only about 30cm long?????
I regrouped, started sailing again and the same thing happened again. However this time I was lucky and it was only a smaller catapult.
Throughout the day I kept hitting smaller carp, it was becoming quite confidence sapping as every 2nd or 3rd run I was hitting something (no BS)
So I am thinking now there is more fish in boggy than most people think. Maybe it is a bad time of year right now as ive never really had this problem before.
Come on seabreezes and daylight savings, coz its back to the beach for me.
Lost all confidence now sailing at boggy :(((((
Hi Mark. Glad you're remembering your roots (ie "Sems whore") 
. I spent the weekend on KI with family. They need to rename that place "Lake Island". That place has so many lakes and lagoons. Would have been good to spend a few more days there and take the gear.
it's depressing that after getting water back into Boggy, carp might now deter sailing there. it's such a fun and reliable spot in summer, but all these catapults are starting to destroy gear and morale.
Last time i was there i felt something brush past my leg 
....that was enough to scare the crap outta me.....!! or maybe it was just the Boggy bunyip....
I guess you have to weigh up being eaten by a big fish with big teeth or being catapuled by a smaller fish
Maybe we need to ride weed fins to minimize the chance of a catapult.....the S Type is a bit more raked back might ride over the carp better
