Can you tell me what Rashi is describing when he writes that "There are places in the ocean that aren't compatible with iron"?

Thanks

chaim katz, montreal canada

Thanks very much, but there has to be another explanation? Bermuda Triangle mysteries are a bunch of baloney, (see even wikipedia) (even though the explanation you quoted is found on many frum web-sites (and in the rshash?). Anyway I was thinking that maybe iron nails won't work because of rust...

I just found this on the internet: (see 'dhow' in wikipedia)

"The idea of a boat made up of planks sewn together seems strange. Actually, it is a type that has been in wide use in many parts of the world and in some places still is. In the Indian Ocean, it dominated the waters right up to the fifteenth century, when the arrival of the Portuguese opened the area to European methods. A Greek sea captain or merchant who wrote in the first century AD reports the use of small sewn boats off Zanzibar and off the southern coast of Arabia. Marco Polo saw sewn boats at Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. He took a dim view of them: "they were twine and with it stitch the planks of the ship together. It keeps well and is not corroded by sea-water but it will not stand well in a storm." (Marco Polo, Book I, ch xviii, translated by H. Yule, 3rd edition, London, 1903, I, p.108)"

Thanks very much,

Chaim, Montreal, Canada