Anti-collision strobe

bilbobaggins

bilbobaggins

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Today's MAIB publication strengthens my conviction that yacht crews should carry and be prepared to display an 'anti-collision high-intensity strobe light' - of the type fitted to most powered aircraft for decades - in the event of close encounter.

I have used one on two urgent occasions in the past 10 years, and the effect was immediate. Friends with me then have each fitted something similar to their boats, which is commonplace in the USA.

In this, I disagree with the comment in ColRegs - which provide inadequate protection for small craft encountering fast merchant vessels - and I'm still here to tell of it.

"See and be seen"

.
 
I suppose that the difficulty here is that strobe lights at sea can be confused with a North Cardinal Buoy under the IALA system. Your aircraft don't meet many of these.
In an area where Cardinal buoys are commonplace this could lead to difficulties.
Perhaps the strobe should be coloured in some way not used by IALA buoys e.g. orange or purple?
 
If you are about to be run down, if the vessel avoids you as a yacht or North Cardinal Buoy, does it matter?
I agree as to showing a strobe for normal nav light use, by the way.

Brian
 
[ QUOTE ]
be prepared to display an 'anti-collision high-intensity strobe light'

[/ QUOTE ] If yellow, flashing at about two per second, with a steaming light on, this would identify you as an air cushion vehicle in air cushion mode. In other words, a vehicle which can point in one direction, yet travel in a completely different direction. But then, perhaps this is the desired behaviour of an indecisive yot favoured with an over-close relationship with a big vessel . . .

A slower yellow flash would identify you as one of a pair of purse seine fishing vessels . . .

How the IOW fast ferries justify the use of flashing yellow lights I really don't know. There's certainly no provision for them in Colregs, but maybe there's a local reg? Why? At their speed they have to do all the collision avoidance irrespective of Colregs? Maybe. More like boy's toys to me.

The appropriate signal is a bright white light - flares? - or an umpty-ump thousand candlepower searchlight directed at the bridge?

And one could give a thought to the brightness of the sailing and steaming lights. 2nm visibility is a pretty poor range of visibility. How about fitting a set more suited to a bigger vessel, giving 5nm range? Ah. Wattage. Batteries. Expense. Hmm.

Well, since radar lookout is prime nowadays, how about an active reflector, a transponder. That works in bad vis too. But don't forget, if you're not in sight of one another, you've got to behave like a power vessel, giving way to oncoming traffic from your right.
 
Yes, it does matter. Take as an example a 150,000 tons of oil tanker fully laden which sees your strobe light, mistakes it for a North Cardinal and alters course accordingly. The only trouble is that the water to the north of YOUR light is too shallow and she runs aground creating an enormous oil spillage catastrophe. OK , she's missed you but who is to blame?
I know the tanker will probably take other precautions such as look at the chart, radar, etc., but the possibility is there and on a foul night when time is of the essence it could just happen.
 
Certainly the carrying of anti-collision strobes is widespread in the US, in my experience, but like others I am uncomfortable about using a device that is outside of the colregs for the reasons stated above.

On the two times that we have considered ourselves to be in serious danger of collsion at night we have shone a powerful torch on our sails, this seems to have the desired effect.
 
I too am a shine a sine a steamer scarer on the sails man. The other thing that I do in very rough seas is put my masthead anchor light on as well as normal nav lights as I don't have a tricolour. This is almost right being almost a steaming light and stern light. My rational is that it will give early indication of my presence and the norma nav lights will give a truer indication of my distance
 
I suspect the Officer of the Watch on a commercial vessel would be unlikely to act on one piece of information. He/she would need more than just a flashing white light to assume it is a North Cardinal.

He would use the information in the context of his other nav info and should work out that either something is amiss or he is not where he thinks he is. Either way you have his attention.

I think they are a great idea. Where do we get good powerful strobes from?
 
I bought new sails last season and one of the options was to fit reflective stripes on the sails, I went for this option and they certainly did stand out at night, for greater effect shine a torch on the stripes
 
When I bought my current boat, it came fitted with an intruder alarm including a blue strobe mounted up the mizzen.
I have often considered a modification so I can set just the strobe a flashing, maybe with a horn shouting NEE NAR NEE NAR /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
[ QUOTE ]
I suspect the Officer of the Watch on a commercial vessel would be unlikely to act on one piece of information. He/she would need more than just a flashing white light to assume it is a North Cardinal.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. A strobe is fairly obviously a strobe, and a flashing white light is a flashing white light.

A few buoys may have a strobe, but this marked on the chart e.g. Codling in the Irish Sea is a strobe, or was 15 years ago.

So, as an ex- watch officer, if I saw a strobe, I would think it was a vessel, or at least something out of the ordinary,(unless I was expecting a strobe marker buoy).

Would much prefer to see a strobe at 5 miles, and wonder what it was, than see a dim red or green at 1 mile.
 
Certainly fitted a stobe to our life jackets as they can be seen from so far away from helicopters but not sure if they are the way to go on boats.

A good tricolour inparts so much info regarding aspect etc. Surely with the development of good LED's (with higher light outputs and lower power consumption) what would be to everyones benefit would be to have an MCA approved LED tricolour.
 
Retroflective strips would tend to shine the light back towards the origin of the light in the cokpit, not so much onwards and outwards to fast approaching ferries' bridges.
 
I too have reservations about use of a strobe, especially since spending half one night chasing after one years ago in Biscay, assuming it was a liferaft!
 
[ QUOTE ]

I too am a shine a sine a steamer scarer on the sails man.

[/ QUOTE ]

It you are in a situation where you feel you need to shine your steamer scarer on the sails, I think you should go the whole hog and shine it directly at the theat. Even a 1 000 000 candle job wouldn't blind anyone at a mile or two.
 
Seem to remember taking the bright white torch, and shining on sails, at bridge, on sails, at bridge - attract attention, and show the problem. In the days when I went to sea...
 
I really wonder if illuminated sails would be visible at a mile or two. They may look pretty bright viewed from a veiw meters away but the torch beam would be spread out over, what, 20 m2 and the reflectivity of even nice white sails is not likely to be more than, say, 50%, given that they will look almost as bright on the other side.

My guess is that, at the limit of visibility of a small boat's nav lights, floodlighting the sail will have no effect.

Anyone know if any experimental work done on this? Wouldn't be hard to set up.
 
I also had 2 other ideas
1) Single ignition 120 shot Roman candle aimed at offending vessel?
2) laser spread emanating upwards from vessel

anybody know the power requirements of 2)?
 
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