NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Lights etc.
From: Trevor Kenchington
Date: 2003 Oct 10, 11:30 -0300
From: Trevor Kenchington
Date: 2003 Oct 10, 11:30 -0300
Keith Williams wrote: > Why one earth would a sailor use solely an all-round white when > underway? WE NEED THE COLOURED SECTORS Well, my own boat is under 7 metres (around 6.7) but she doesn't carry batteries, mostly because I have no way to keep them charged when she is on her mooring, and there is no practical way to mount kerosene lamps so that the colours show in their appropriate sectors. I'm not about to undertake offshore passages at night in her but we do get fog here (when the ColRegs require nav lights) and I can operate into the dusk. An all-round white light, supplemented with a flashlight in time to avoid a collision, as per the ColRegs, seems sensible to me. At under 7 metres, hull speed tops out at about 6 knots but we mostly plod along at 2 or 3. If some passing powerboat chooses to interpret our white light as an anchor light or a stern light, it wouldn't make much difference. Either way, we form a near-static obstacle that the powerboat is supposed to avoid. Trevor Kenchington -- Trevor J. Kenchington PhD Gadus@iStar.ca Gadus Associates, Office(902) 889-9250 R.R.#1, Musquodoboit Harbour, Fax (902) 889-9251 Nova Scotia B0J 2L0, CANADA Home (902) 889-3555 Science Serving the Fisheries http://home.istar.ca/~gadus