Habebty
Well-Known Member
WP22 is a bad place with small ball sized floats around the Goodwin Fork. never seen any at Dungeness, but Looe Channel had some milk carton floats.
Is there a water depth where you are "safe" from dreaded Pot Buoys?
- Thread starter MagicalArmchair
- Start date
tillergirl
Well-Known Member
I remember you warned me of those the day before. They were very small.
oldgit
Well-Known Member
Just done Medway to Ramsgate section.
Numorous faded 5L old oil bottles in the Inshore route ,mostly around mid Sheppey. Some solo, some marking either end of nets ?
Not a lot from then on until Margate, several around Longnose and beyond,these are normally small round ball type markers. All were well weeded up and hard to spot. None had anything such as masts or pennants.
Nothing spotted on return in Princes channel.
Numorous faded 5L old oil bottles in the Inshore route ,mostly around mid Sheppey. Some solo, some marking either end of nets ?
Not a lot from then on until Margate, several around Longnose and beyond,these are normally small round ball type markers. All were well weeded up and hard to spot. None had anything such as masts or pennants.
Nothing spotted on return in Princes channel.
MagicalArmchair
Well-Known Member
Thank you. By WP22 we will have some light with us with any luck. At the Looe channel it will be light, however we'll be keeping an eagle eyed lookout. My friend got rescued there by the RNLI in his Starlight 35 when his prop got fouled in glassy conditions and he was drifting towards the rocks - only ever callout in 50 years of sailing!
Thank you for first hand, up to date, pilotage, that's very helpful. I'm going the Princes Channel route along the North Kent Coast and standing off from Four Fathoms channel this time around. I'll stand well off Longnose also to try and avoid any Pot Buoy fun
howardclark
Well-Known Member
Have done the Crouch to Dartmouth each way several times. Can’t ever remember finding a patch that was particularly memorable for pot buoys. If the tide and weather are right you may take the inshore passage at StAlbans & Portland and then you have to be very careful. If you are unsure stand a few miles off St Albans and 5 off Portland and even then you may get buoys but not crazy seas.
howardclark
Well-Known Member
Sorry should have added that in those fast flowing waters the buoys can be dragged just under the surface and difficult to see. Just as bad as night and more so if the float is black
fisherman
Well-Known Member
Thing is then the rope is vertical, think kite string, it makes a catenary, starting near horizontal on the bottom. You should push past without hitching. trouble is with a small float it can stow in little current and the rope isn't very tight.
Kelpie
Well-Known Member
Last night I passed within a boat length of a pair of buoys almost exactly half way between Westray and Cape Wrath. It was just before dark and scared the bejeesus out of me. 240ft depth, no other buoys to be seen. So I guess nowhere is safe.
johnalison
Well-Known Member
Apart from one or two places mentioned, I don't remember meeting pots in the normal route along the coast. There are some closer inshore off Shoreham and along the coast but unless you are tacking inshore they should be out of the way. At night I would give the headlands a berth of half a mile or more to be on the safe side.
MagicalArmchair
Well-Known Member
The trip was disappointingly windless, however, we did have a little sail, and most importantly, the delivery went off without incident. We set off at 5:30am from Ocean Village Marina and arrived in Chatham at midday the following day.
As mentioned, Dover Port Control were very pleasant, informative, and grateful we informed them of our intentions. We did have a bit of a game of nautical frogger as we crossed Dover (the AIS was crucial here, as we had a CPA of 50 foot, with a TCPA of 17 minutes, that we hadn't even picked up on the horizon using Mk 1 eyeball).
We took a route far out around the East Kent Coast, to avoid pot buoys on the inner channels, which paid off as there were none seen.
Along the Looe, off Selsey, we didn't see that many, and none between the Street and Boulder buoys themselves. This one was a little way before Selsey:
Overnight, on my off watch (between 10pm and 1am), between Beachy Head and Dover, the shift officer noted a pot buoy slipped past about 15m to port that he had failed to spot. During my graveyard shift from 1am to 4am, in the inky blackness off Ramsgate, we were in the lap of the gods as, even with a nearly full moon, I would have had little chance of seeing any pot buoys.
Is there any reasonably priced night vision solutions these days to help with scanning the horizon at night? Or is it all megabucks?
As mentioned, Dover Port Control were very pleasant, informative, and grateful we informed them of our intentions. We did have a bit of a game of nautical frogger as we crossed Dover (the AIS was crucial here, as we had a CPA of 50 foot, with a TCPA of 17 minutes, that we hadn't even picked up on the horizon using Mk 1 eyeball).
We took a route far out around the East Kent Coast, to avoid pot buoys on the inner channels, which paid off as there were none seen.
Along the Looe, off Selsey, we didn't see that many, and none between the Street and Boulder buoys themselves. This one was a little way before Selsey:
Overnight, on my off watch (between 10pm and 1am), between Beachy Head and Dover, the shift officer noted a pot buoy slipped past about 15m to port that he had failed to spot. During my graveyard shift from 1am to 4am, in the inky blackness off Ramsgate, we were in the lap of the gods as, even with a nearly full moon, I would have had little chance of seeing any pot buoys.
Is there any reasonably priced night vision solutions these days to help with scanning the horizon at night? Or is it all megabucks?
Sandyman
Well-Known Member
A shift orficer no less. On a sailing boat ?
MagicalArmchair
Well-Known Member
He was the Vice Commodore of bacon butties too
... until we ran out of gas off the North Kent coast... the word mutiny was bandied about...Edit:
Back from thread drift - one of these is quite expensive at 399 boat credits: Raymarine FLIR Ocean Scout TK 20 degree Field of View - 432-0012-22-00S
Being that Raymarine mark everything up, are there better hunting equivalents out there? Its resolution is 640 x 480. It reckons 130 yards of vision, so about 120 meters. Its IP67 and has no zoom.
This hunting guy is a third of the price at £150: ESSLNB Night Vision Monocular Scope 5X40 Night Vision: Amazon.co.uk: Camera & Photo . It reckons 200 meters of useful range, has a 5x zoom and has the same resolution of 640 x 480. It's not waterproof
Buy cheap... you buy twice?
All that said, let's consider how useful this is in a "watch" situation. If we consider our passage making speed is 5 knots, we'll cover roughly 150 meters every minute, if we assume the most flattering range above of 200 meters, that means the shift orficer would need to check the camera every single minute. If we use the (probably more realistic) range of the Raymarine, that comes down to 0.8 minutes. It would also have the effect of ruining night vision by squinting at a little bright screen every sixty seconds...
Seems not very appealing....
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differentroads
Well-Known Member
Bad news I'm afraid. Running down the Portugese coast two years ago I came across three pot markers in well over 1000m according to the chart. Well, they might have been pot markers but we were just inside the shipping lanes and every port we'd been in had very stringent warnings about drug smuggling.Thanks pvb, that's saved me the job of squinting at the pilot book tonight. I've added this to my passage plan.
Yikes... now to plan a route with only depths over 900 metres....
I've done only a couple of night sails on your route. My experience was that at night just as in daytime, the trawlers are more problematic. Staying well out running close and parallel to the shipping lanes worked for me but my experience is limited.
Habebty
Well-Known Member
Would imagine they were drift net markers?
MagicalArmchair
Well-Known Member
We didn't see hardly any fishing boats, which was really strange, as previous times I have made this trip, they have caused significant anxiety (why is it they are always aiming for you??). Off the East Kent coast, we didn't see a single fishing boat, even off the south coast, I think we only spied a couple of significant size (a few more smaller, leisure fisherman). With radar these are less of a risk for us as the radar lights it up and we can avoid more effectively.
fisherman
Well-Known Member
The triple football float has become very popular, and the one in the pic is standing upright because of the tide. This makes it easier to see than a milk bottle. You would have difficulty picking it up, unless you sailed close up tide on a reach and you were listed over enough for it to run the rope inside the rudder.
Just before I packed up I had 68 such floats, from Mountamopus buoy to the Lizard, some on the track from Newlyn to the Lizard. I never found evidence of anyone getting caught.
Just before I packed up I had 68 such floats, from Mountamopus buoy to the Lizard, some on the track from Newlyn to the Lizard. I never found evidence of anyone getting caught.
peter gibbs
Well-Known Member
Correct . Hastings area is another. Owers / Weymouth likely (personal experience there!) Nothing much in the Dover area but Folkestone could be one. And Deal / Ramsgate
Depth is no safeguard but distance offshore does reduce the incidence of pots.
So, given there's little life left close in, it may pay to veer that way.
One observation of recent times - more than 5 miles offshore tends to attract better class of fisherman /larger vessels with larger orange buoys that usually don't get tangled with yachts because they stay on the surface and aren't submerged by tides.
PWG
dunedin
Well-Known Member
Just passed a cluster in 110 metres, and 7 miles offshore from any land.
In Scotland so nicely marked according to new rules, but probably still impossible to see when Atlantic swell piling in.
Lucky Duck
Well-Known Member
I didn't mention them as they weren't on the OP's track but Pevensey Bay and the approaches to Sovereign Harbour was infested with them when taking a direct route from Dungeness .
MagicalArmchair
Well-Known Member
I was trying to get an idea if the Raymarine radar on board was sensitive enough to pick up pot buoys - the conclusion on the trip was probably not... an even less likely with a big swell running of course...
As mentioned above, if they are good quality and not dragged under by the tide, they will hopefully bounce off the hull and not get wrapped around anything if you did make contact...
