Rastaman

Ive hit a railroad timber and knocked the lower unit off. I also ran over a drifting shrimp net and had to jump over at night and cut it out of the wheel. that was no fun. Statistically I'm not sure how my average runs but those two incidents are over about 200 trips at night.

In any event I saw neither and would not have even with a spotlight. One last horror story, on the way home from the rigs during the day a few years ago I pulled it off of autopilot to avoid a 40ft container from a ship. Just the tip was bobbing on the surface about 1 ft. That one would have hurt.

Tuna Man

Jason,(ReelProperty)myself and two family members (his) were heading out from Mobile, this during the daytime. He has twins and we hit a 2x4 crosswise. At the speed we were at one would of thought the motors were riping off the transom. We were lucky, only damage was a good soaking from the wall of water pushed up andover the transom:banghead

Gulftider

We run at night quit often. Use the auto pilot and radar .we set the zone alarms on the radar set at 1/4-1/2 mile on the inner zone and 1-1.5 miles on the outer zone. Speed depends on the sea conditions. my boat likes to go 30-35 knots as the sweat spot for fuel efficiency but I rarely run that fast at night even in good conditions. usually 25knotsmax; we're up on a good plane and getting pretty good economy. if it's rough we'll run about 15 knots with the trim tabs down plow through... not good economy but we're not going beat ourselves up either.

Know your navigation eletronic like the back of your hand and at night wear life vests, have a hand held vhf & inflatable raft out for easy access in case of disaster.