Captain may have had a used GPS from an Apache. On normal boats that would be marked as "buoy", but on an Apache GPS it's marked as "navigational speed bump".

from the looks of the damage i would say the boat was not traveling at a high rate of speed,also how many fountain,s or any performance boats have radar?my guess,not many.

I dont think you have to be going to fast to do that much damage. 5 maybe 10MPH hitting steel and concrete. The next question is how the hell do you hit that at only 10 MPH?

If you forget you have 5ft of beak, then you'll be closer than you thinnk.

"Caution, objects in front of you may be closer than they appear." Hah.

Being very familiar with that stretch of water not sure how anyone could run over a buoy there ... very wide channel at that point (wide enough for very large commercial container ships, cruise ships, ferrys, nuclear powered attack subs with escorts, tall ships including the Coast Guard's Barque Eagle, to name a few, to navigate effortlessly)... lots of ambient light from Pfizer, EB, New London and Groton, as well as a full moon that night, and no fog or haze ... ? Just hope everyone is OK ... haven't read nor heard otherwise.

Used to do a ton of night time boating, many years a nightly ritual..

Damn near ran over a unlit kayaker a mile offshore in the Gulf on a clear night , never any boat traffic.

That was 15 years ago , before every other person now owns a standup paddle board.

Even on clear nights you can't take your eyes off the water in front of you , not to mention keeping a lookout for the stray idiot that might be running you down from astern or from your quarter.

Anything above minimal plane 15-20 is risky.

So you check the weekly notice to mariners everytime you go boating..?

I guess ICU's boat does...

It does not have radar and I don't check them. However if I had the same allision it would also be my fault. I run at night on plane because I know my area. I'm also going too fast for the conditions. Im not saying I or we all don't do it, purely stating it is self inflicted. If I hit something doing so it is solely my fault. That's all I'm saying.

Mine stay checked at work. We get them weekly. Charts are corrected by law for the commercial vessels.

We now have two post out of the last 5 or so that say "I run at night because I know my area". You all may recall the runabout that ran into a non-lighted temporary construction barge at night a while back and killed several people. This guy knew the area like the back of his hand too, but guess what, you never know when things change in that area you know so well.

I used to run at night all the time, but these day, I don't unless darkness sneaks up on me, and then, at idle or slow as possible.

I don't run at night much. I've had too many close calls where I'm moving along at minimum planing speed, which for me is around 12-15 with my tabs down. I've almost run over fishermen in unlit boats, canoes out in the dark in the middle of the lake and unlit pontoon boats with a bunch of teenagers. God forbid I ever kill someone and if I had a beer or 2 I'd be in jail! So I try to be back to my dock by dark. Just too many bad things. And then there's always the floating log in the dark or some other debris.