On Thu, 29 Jun 2017 00:08:06 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:


We do pretty much the same thing on our boat. Big stuff starts
showing up on the radar at about 15 miles and we track it
electronically until it is clearly not a threat. It's not alwways
possible to keep 10 miles away but anything less than 4 or 5 is a real
concern and gets my full attention.

Most of our thorniest issues occur at night when we are running along
the coast 4 or 5 miles out. Some of the ones that stick in my mind
are the places offshore of busy ports like Norfolk, Savannah,
Charleston and Georgetown. Outgoing freighters sometimes get obscured
by the clutter of channel buoys and shore lights, even on radar.
Cruise ships are deceptive because they are so large and so brightly
lit that they feel like they are much closer than actually. AIS has
helped a lot in recent years however. One of the nice things about
AIS is having the vessels name if you need to call them on the radio
for clarification.

Going out of Norfolk we had the "special sea detail" set until we were
well out to sea and pretty far away from anything. That is a lot of
eyeballs looking around and the captain was usually on the bridge,
even if he did not have the con.