In rec.boats.cruising renewontime dot com wrote:
The problem for merchant ships is that small sailing vessels are just
hard to see. VERY hard to see. They usually present a poor RADAR
target and have dim or no navigation lights.

Could you tell us what is a sufficient RADAR target?
I found an old article:
http://www.ussailing.org/safety/Stud...eflector_2.htm
according to which my Mobri "does not perform well".

They say that in my area many commercial ships from a certain country do
not really keep RADAR watch, only listen to a possible radar warning
while reading magazines and having tea. Does that seem possible?

Where would you like the yachts to have their navigation lights?
Masthead or deck level? Masthead is seen from further away, but misleads
with regard to distance.

Dag Stenberg

Could you tell us what is a sufficient RADAR target?

I'm afraid I can't give you any substantive help shopping for a RADAR
reflector. There was a long thread on this a couple of weeks ago that
might be helpful.

They say that in my area many commercial ships from a certain country do
not really keep RADAR watch, only listen to a possible radar warning
while reading magazines and having tea. Does that seem possible?

Possible? Anything is possible, but as I've posted earlier, that has
not been my experience. There have been exceptions though, as I posted
earlier.

Where would you like the yachts to have their navigation lights?
Masthead or deck level? Masthead is seen from further away, but misleads
with regard to distance.

By all means, I'd rig the biggest, brightest navigation lights you can
either at the masthead (tri-color if the size of your yacht allows it)
or the "red over green" additional lights on your mast. More
information on the proper location of these lights can be found in COLREGS.

--

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Dag Stenberg wrote:
In rec.boats.cruising renewontime dot com wrote:

The problem for merchant ships is that small sailing vessels are just
hard to see. VERY hard to see. They usually present a poor RADAR
target and have dim or no navigation lights.


Could you tell us what is a sufficient RADAR target?
I found an old article:
http://www.ussailing.org/safety/Stud...eflector_2.htm
according to which my Mobri "does not perform well".

They say that in my area many commercial ships from a certain country do
not really keep RADAR watch, only listen to a possible radar warning
while reading magazines and having tea. Does that seem possible?

To get a radar warning alarm, they would need to have the radar turned
on and operating. However, if you are asking if someone is standing by
the radar at all times watching it, the answer is, no.


Where would you like the yachts to have their navigation lights?
Masthead or deck level? Masthead is seen from further away, but misleads
with regard to distance.

Dag Stenberg

Where the rules allow, the higher the better. Don't worry about them
misleading as to distance as much as worrying about being seen at a
distance.
A great secondary ID method for sailboats at night is lighting up your
sails with a flashlight, etc..
Generally this will give a brighter target without destroying visibility
of your running lights.

otn

On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 17:08:21 GMT, otnmbrd
wrote:

A great secondary ID method for sailboats at night is lighting up your
sails with a flashlight, etc..
Generally this will give a brighter target without destroying visibility
of your running lights.

Here's how I "get attention" on Lake Ontario if I see I am closing
with a lake freighter at night.

1) Running lights are always on at dusk.

2) Mast top trilight is on, too, although I am only obliged to have
one or the other.

3) If under power or motorsailing, I have the steaming light on at the
spreaders.

4) If I detect no change, I will hail the ship on 16. If no response,
I will hail them on 13, which is sometimes monitored more closely in
my area. If I get a response, I will give my position in lat/lon and
my bearing to them, my speed and my suggested reciprocal bearing (Uh,
on the port quarter and closing, Skipper...that's me!)

5) I will shine a million candela spot on my sail if sailing or down
my deck if under jib alone and/or under power. I will flick my anchor
light. I will fire a bloody flare at them, duck their stern and report
them to the Coast Guard, giving time, lat/lon and other details.

Only some of the above have ever been necessary, but I have gotten to
within two NM before being seen on light air nights with a full moon,
and have not shown well on their radars...basically, I had to give
them a vector to follow to see me.

None of the above would be possible were I below not keeping a watch.
"They can't see you" is my default assumption. COLREGS might help my
widow get a better settlement, but I will get out of the way of
shipping unless I have positive proof they've seen ME.

It does give me a huge appreciation for WWII destroyers that sank
surfaced U-boats at a couple of thousand yards at night in the
Atlantic. The conning tower of a U-boat is a much worse target than a
white decked sailboat.

I did like the scale used for measuring the return from "radar flag", though
I can't recall
it as an ISO measurement from my days as a student.

Presumably the scale runs

Coot, Duck, Swan, Albatross, Dumbo...

And accounts for the saying

"Less chance than a duck in the fog"

Could you tell us what is a sufficient RADAR target?
I found an old article:
http://www.ussailing.org/safety/Stud...eflector_2.htm
according to which my Mobri "does not perform well".

New Conservative wrote:
Hi all,

I haven't actually sailed a boat yet but plan to later this year. I am
therefore still a bit green when it comes to the intricacies of the
subject.
Say I'm keen to visit the West Indies and I'm leaving from say
Southampton, England. I'm on my own and will need to sleep every day,
even if only for a few hours. Is it safe to let a boat 'sail herself'
while I catch some shut-eye, or is this a no-no?

Is it safe - not really because of the risk of a larger vessel turning
your boat into smaller pieces. I had an acquaintance who was single
handing who was bashed into by a cruise ship. He swore he was just
below for 15 minutes having a cup of tea and updating the chart
position.

Ships can come over the horizon in about 10 minutes to your position
if moving at say 22 knots. They seldom keep a good lookout at sea in
my experiences, and a small boats lights at night are only visible 2
miles away. At 22 knots that's a pretty short time to notice a
contact and alter course for the big ship. Big ships often have their
radar off during the day too.

Can it be done safely
or would I have to drop all sail and just bob around in the dark for a
while until I've awoken?

Dropping sail just makes you a stationary target rather than a moving
one and increases your exposure time.

Obviously it'd make for a shorter passage if
I could somehow keep going 24/7. And ideas? Thanks.

1. Consider taking a crew member just for the offshore passage from
England to the West Indies. Crew fatigue is probably one of the
biggest causes of accidents on offshore trips

2. If you're determined to do it solo, invest in a Radar with a
"guard zone"; a radar detector like a CARD, and carry life insurance.
Get a timer that wakes you every fifteen minutes to look around.

3. The most dangerous times are within a few hundred miles of the
coast but that is probably 48 hours of sailing for a typical cruising
boat so you need to be alert for that time period. That's a long time
to be alert after an ocean passage.

In short it's not a good idea, although people do it.

Evan Gatehouse

in message , New
Conservative ') wrote:

Hi all,

I haven't actually sailed a boat yet but plan to later this year. I am
therefore still a bit green when it comes to the intricacies of the
subject.
Say I'm keen to visit the West Indies and I'm leaving from say
Southampton, England. I'm on my own and will need to sleep every day,
even if only for a few hours. Is it safe to let a boat 'sail herself'
while I catch some shut-eye, or is this a no-no?

It's a legally dodgy area. The colregs say that you must keep an
effective watch at all times, and clearly the extent to which a
singlehander can do that is questionable. However, if you're sailing a
small boat which is unlikely to do serious damage to anything you might
be in collision with I don't see it as a morally dodgy area. Of course
your own boat may sink, but that's a risk you take... in fact the sea
is very large and (apart from choke points like the English Channel)
the number of vessels in any given area is very small so the chances of
a collision are very low.

Can it be done safely
or would I have to drop all sail and just bob around in the dark for a
while until I've awoken?

There's no safety benefit from 'dropping all sail and just bobbing
about'; you might as well be making way in the direction you want to go
(and the movement of the boat will be more comfortable).

Obviously it'd make for a shorter passage if
I could somehow keep going 24/7. And ideas? Thanks.

There are two strategies. One is period based alarms - when you go to
sleep you set an alarm to wake you at a particular time - and the other
is event based alarms. If you use a self steering gear rather than an
autopilot you may use an 'off course alarm' linked to an electronic
compass; you may have an alarm set to go off if windspeed exceeds a
predetermined threshold; you may have a proximity alarm linked to an
active radar transponder. People who race singlehanded employ both
these strategies.

One thing is that most successful singlehanded sailors sleep for very
short periods - often only twenty or thirty minutes at a time, although
ideally with many of these 'cat naps' in a twenty four hour period. You
can train yourself to get used to this sort of routine before you leave
(and take it from me it's horribly tough and you end up after a few
weeks feeling horribly fatigued).

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; This email may contain confidential or otherwise privileged
;; information, though, quite frankly, if you're not the intended
;; recipient and you've got nothing better to do than read other
;; folks' emails then I'm glad to have brightened up your sad little
;; life a tiny bit.

"New Conservative" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

I haven't actually sailed a boat yet but plan to later this year. I am
therefore still a bit green when it comes to the intricacies of the
subject.
Say I'm keen to visit the West Indies and I'm leaving from say
Southampton, England. I'm on my own and will need to sleep every day,
even if only for a few hours. Is it safe to let a boat 'sail herself'
while I catch some shut-eye, or is this a no-no? Can it be done safely
or would I have to drop all sail and just bob around in the dark for a
while until I've awoken? Obviously it'd make for a shorter passage if
I could somehow keep going 24/7. And ideas? Thanks.
--

Martin Smith, the New Conservative Party.

http://www.newconservativeparty.org

Is this a troll?
If you've never sailed, I suggest you get some instruction and experience
before ever thinking about single handing. Tat process will answer most of
your questions.
There is a breed of looney (I hope you are not really one of them) who has
bought a boat and set off with no idea of how to sail, and they are usually
the ones who end up in the newspapers or in the morgue. Learn from their
mistakes, and take one step at a time. Such people are a menace, especially
to the rescue services.

On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 10:11:57 -0000, "Duncan Heenan"
wrote:


"New Conservative" wrote in message
.. .
Hi all,

I haven't actually sailed a boat yet but plan to later this year. I am
therefore still a bit green when it comes to the intricacies of the
subject.
Say I'm keen to visit the West Indies and I'm leaving from say
Southampton, England. I'm on my own and will need to sleep every day,
even if only for a few hours. Is it safe to let a boat 'sail herself'
while I catch some shut-eye, or is this a no-no? Can it be done safely
or would I have to drop all sail and just bob around in the dark for a
while until I've awoken? Obviously it'd make for a shorter passage if
I could somehow keep going 24/7. And ideas? Thanks.
--

Martin Smith, the New Conservative Party.

http://www.newconservativeparty.org

Is this a troll?
If you've never sailed, I suggest you get some instruction and experience
before ever thinking about single handing. Tat process will answer most of
your questions.
There is a breed of looney (I hope you are not really one of them) who has
bought a boat and set off with no idea of how to sail, and they are usually
the ones who end up in the newspapers or in the morgue. Learn from their
mistakes, and take one step at a time. Such people are a menace, especially
to the rescue services.

It's okay, most of them don't have emergency locator beacons or file
sail plans anyway. so that solves that issue.
Darwin works !

New Conservative wrote:

I haven't actually sailed a boat yet but plan to later this year. I
am therefore still a bit green when it comes to the intricacies of
the subject.
Say I'm keen to visit the West Indies and I'm leaving from say
Southampton, England. I'm on my own and will need to sleep every
day, even if only for a few hours. Is it safe to let a boat 'sail
herself' while I catch some shut-eye, or is this a no-no? Can it be
done safely or would I have to drop all sail and just bob around in
the dark for a while until I've awoken? Obviously it'd make for a
shorter passage if I could somehow keep going 24/7. And ideas?

Sailing alone over longer distances is not something that many people
experience, so there tends to be a broad range of responses when this kind
of question is asked. One thing you can be sure of is that people who sail
alone will give you vastly different responses compared to those who do not.

Having said that, I think you may be getting ahead of yourself. Why not
give this issue some thought _after_ you have sailed for a few years and
made a few coastal cruises. By then you will have made a few of the
mistakes, and experienced one or two of the terrors, that we ell have, and
you will be in a position to answer quite a few of your own questions.

Also by then you will have gained enough experience to put forth questions
that are worth spending time answering.

--
Good luck and good sailing.
s/v Kerry Deare of Barnegat
http://kerrydeare.home.comcast.net/