Quote:
Originally Posted by boatman61
You do realize that's half of what I paid for the Hurley 22 I sailed from the UK down to Portugal one December and around the same price I paid for my Corribee 21 that I made the same trip on a couple of years later.
What you deep pocket folks don't seem to realise is you come across as calling us shallow pocket folk dangerous and have no right to be on the water..
Well... you can swivel on that straight away.. you sound like my neighbor who reckons I should not ride my Virago because I wear jeans and not custom leathers like him.  |
"You deep pocket folks," what a crock! Your excuses for not using radar seem to be steadily evolving. A few years ago in a similar thread, you stated that when you were delivering a
boat with the owner on board, when you came on watch during a dark night he had the radar on but you turned it off because you didn't like radar, so you were on watch on a
boat that was already equipped with a working radar and you STILL refused to use it. I remember it because I thought it was ridiculous back then, but now you pretending it's all about the
money seems even more absurd. As I stated a few pages back, I just gave away a working radar to the boatyard tech who is installing my new one. I saw him yesterday and he said he's got about 20 of them laying around and surprisingly, the most valuable
parts to him, even though many of them were working when removed from boats, are the
fiberglass enclosures because sometimes they get cracked and it's impossible to order a replacement. So, as long as you've been active in the
marine industry, you MUST have a few friends who
work at
boatyards, and with your gift of gab, if you asked around, I'm sure for the price of a few drinks at a pub or a favor or two, you could easily procure a used radar that had been removed from a boat during a
refit and install it yourself. It wouldn't be the latest and greatest but it would be perfectly serviceable. I've installed 2 radars myself and it's not difficult if you know how to splice wires. If you wanted one, you'd have one.
I don't think every boat needs to have a radar. For example that are lots of boats that are basically used as daysailors in fair
weather, or are just used for
racing during the day, and then there are the fleets of
charter boats in locations where there is no fog and night sailing isn't allowed. But for anyone who plans to go
offshore or to sail overnight or in bad
weather conditions in reduced visibility, it seems to me that every responsible
skipper doing that would want to do everything in his power to be able to see and avoid colliding with other boats rather than expecting everyone else to avoid him. Obtaining a radar is well within your reach of you wanted one.
You keep saying you follow the rules but in reduced visibility the one
rule you re depending most on is the part where the stand on vessel is required to maneuver to avoid the give way vessel when the give way vessel doesn't give way. You don't know where he is so you can't maneuver to avoid him even if you're the give way vessel. Technically you're still within the rules to be doing that but everybody can't depend on everyone else to get out of their way. Why do you think you're so special? Yes, using sound signals and listening is still in the rules, but the problem that anyone knows about who's been out in thick fog is that it's pretty tough to tell direction in thick fog even if both you and the other vessel can hear each other over other noises such as the engines. And since there's usually very little
wind in thick fog, both vessels are apt to be operating under power, not sailing. Back 100+ years ago that's how they did it and it may seem romantic and in keeping with your swashbuckling image you like to keep up to emulate those old salts from days of yore, but they didn't have
engine noise to deal with back then, and they also used to run into each other a lot more than we do today and the primary reason is that now we have a device that allows us to "see" in the fog or on the darkest night. I've got a book beside me that's all about the days of steamships that traveled "downeast" from Boston and in Penobscot Bay where I keep my boat. I was surprised by how many of them eventually came to grief on ledges that would be visible via radar, or they collided with each other and sank with great loss of life despite the fact that there were almost always reports that passengers or crew heard the other vessels whistle before the
collision. These were vessels that were skippered and crewed with full time sailors countless times over the same
route and using the best
collision avoidance
equipment available to them which as their loud steam whistle and ships bell. Relying on sound signals didn't
work very well for them and it wouldn't work very well for you either if everyone else wasn't using their radar to avoid you.
Instead of making up these silly excuses why you don't use radar, why don't you just come out and say you just don't want to bother with it no matter how much it helps make you and all the boats nearby less likely to run into each other? IMHO it's a pretty irresponsible attitude but at least that would be honest.
Re: Sailing vessel and RORO ship on collision courses - what do you think of the outc
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