Ship Navigation Simulation Study Alafia River Tampa Bay Florida PDF Download

The ship simulation study of St. Johns River, Jacksonville, Florida, included channel reaches from the outer entrance channel at the sea buoy to downtown Jacksonville, approximately 30 nautical miles. The study was performed to determine the effects of deepening the navigation channel from -38 ft msl to 42 ft msl. The proposed dredging would maintain the existing bank lines and bank slopes, extending the existing bank slope down to the deeper channel bottom, effectively reducing the channel width from 24 to 40 ft dependent on the bank slope. The initial plans examined were to deepen the entire channel without any widening and to deepen and widen the entire channeL Preliminary investigations conducted with pilots from the St Johns Pilots Association indicated that the unwidened channel would not seriously impact navigation, except for two away traffic. A third plan was developed that widened and deepened the channel reaches east of the Dames Point Bridge and only deepened the reaches west of the bridge, along with some realignments of reaches both east and west of the bridge. This plan, Plan C, was found to provide generally improved navigation as compared with the existing conditions.