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ocean crusing & anti collision tactics....
Here is very common to have two VHF on board one handheld and one fixe
mount. With the use of relay towers locate on high ground the range of an handheld is better than before. Now days the cell and sat. phones, are used more and more. The same thing goes for GPS one handheld with an SD memory card loaded with information and one fixe mount both working on 12 volts and batteries back up. The US defense dept are not suppose to scramble GPS transmissions. But to be on the safe side I still have my old Loran as a back up. This year I have added a 12 volts 700A mobile power pack in case the boat's batteries run out, one more thing (toys) to carry. "rhys" wrote in message ... On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 13:22:47 GMT, Don White wrote: BTW, even when sailing on my friends Mirage 33, I always brought my handheld VHF along and tried to monitor traffic, over his stereo and boisterous crew. I keep a handheld VHF (with a NiCad pack I recharge every 12 hours or so) in a caddy hanging in the companionway. I also have an air horn and a couple of hand rocket flares within reach. Lastly, I file a sail plan with the Coast Guard when cruising away from Toronto and/or so far out in the lake that I'm beyond cell phone range. Sometimes, if the weather's rough, I do a position check and repay their attentions by providing local weather, wave height, etc. as there are only two weather buoys in Lake Ontario (at either end). The lake freighters and tankers keep to fairly well-travelled lanes. I keep a running fix with pelorus and/or GPS on the hour when I do my log entries, and I can tell if I am getting close to these lanes. Lastly, when night sailing, I keep the usual nav lights on and raise a "raincatcher" radar reflector on the flag halyard. I also ready a 500,000 candela halogen hand light to flash on the sails. I also add the "ship-to-ship" frequencies to my scan list on the nav station VHF. Frankly, though, I have had far closer encounters with dopey fellow recreational sailors, powerboaters and jetskiers than I have with commercial maritime traffic. I have had 35-40 foot sailboats under main and motor cross my path obviously under autopilot in Lake Ontario with no one at the helm or visible. I gave one such "near miss" two miles offshore a blast with the horn (I was under sail alone) and saw a bed-headed sailor with a mug of what I assume was coffee appear in his cockpit, peering owlishly about as I sailed off, having missed him by about three boat lengths. Some people just don't get it. He probably thought his chartplotter would shriek if he got near another vessel. R. |