Nice gentle film

[Tradewinds]

Only 8 minutes of your time . . .

 

[Bouba]

The impression from watching the video is that the yacht is very fast

 

[AntarcticPilot]

In my opinion, you don't set out to sea in thick fog. Being caught by it when out is one thing, but setting off KNOWING that visibility is bad seems an unnecessary risk.

 

[stranded]

In my opinion, you don't set out to sea in thick fog. Being caught by it when out is one thing, but setting off KNOWING that visibility is bad seems an unnecessary risk.

To a lot of people, setting out to sea in an itty bitty little boat is an unnecessary risk. Everyone has a different risk appetite I guess, and a different definition of necessary. If your username is a reflection of a past or present occupation I should imagine that at least in some respects yours is much higher than mine, and yet I have on occasion set out in thick fog, wrapped in the false security blanket of my little cocoon of electronics.

 

[stranded]

Only 8 minutes of your time . . .

Lovely.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

To a lot of people, setting out to sea in an itty bitty little boat is an unnecessary risk. Everyone has a different risk appetite I guess, and a different definition of necessary. If your username is a reflection of a past or present occupation I should imagine that at least in some respects yours is much higher than mine, and yet I have on occasion set out in thick fog, wrapped in the false security blanket of my little cocoon of electronics.

Well, I started to sail long before electronic charting and GPS were available; radar was also only to be found on ships and/or millionaire's boats. So my perception of the risk may differ from yours. I have navigated in fog pre-GPS, but it was a nervous occupation as I knew the errors were such that I couldn't be certain of missing known dangers.

I have indeed experience of field work in both Arctic and Antarctic, and have on occasion taken risks that I shouldn't have. But in general, work in such areas requires considerable understanding of the likely risks, and even greater effort to minimise them. Most accidents in the polar regions have happened because people took avoidable risks, often setting out in unsuitable conditions.

 

[adamstjohn]

what a beautiful little gem that was. Some lovely images.

 

[Tradewinds]

I've been up the Menai Strait in fog. Years ago when my wife and I were much younger and when GPS/chartplotters didn't exist . There was a group of us all travelling in a row like ducklings following mother duck (in this case the great Walter Tonks in his yacht Basanti who was elected as chief navigator). We left Caernarfon that evening with a hope the fog would lift but it didn't and we all bailed out around Dinorwic and returned to Caernarfon around 1 am. Much merriment followed and libation was taken.
For us, new to cruising, it was all very exciting - nobody got worked up about the 'what might have beens'. Life was so much simpler in those days.

And that's why I enjoy these gentle, simple videos and occasionally post them here.

 

[tillergirl]

Tis back in the summer of 1987, only a compass and VHF. Forecast in the Channel (Portsmouth to Cherbourg) was zero wind, full sun. Didn't mention to fog banks!

DSC02694 by Roger Gaspar, on Flickr

When we first saw that we didn't know whether it was bows on, had just passed etc, etc. In the end, there was a signal blast au siren, and it slipped behind us. In another bank, we got a blast to starboard - fore-ish, then a blast to port fore-ish and a wake caught us up. Not the nicest.

 

[Poignard]

I departed Cherbourg for the Solent one day with 'fog patches' forecast.

That didn't sound anything to worry about but half way across I found myself in a pea-souper which lasted almost to the Isle of Wight.

I had no radar and no AIS.

It was not a pleasant experience!

Since then, any mention of fog and I don't stay where I am.

 

[johnalison]

In my opinion, you don't set out to sea in thick fog. Being caught by it when out is one thing, but setting off KNOWING that visibility is bad seems an unnecessary risk.

I have set out, with radar, when there was a possibility of poor visibility, but in conditions of my choosing. The Waddensee has its hazards but he was using channels with a minimum of a couple of metres south of Harlingen and well buoyed. I don't see this as unnecessarily challenging, with a plotter to assist. In an extreme case, there is plenty of shallow water to go into if you want to anchor for a while but it didn't look as if the few vessels represented that much risk.

I've not been to Terschelling, only nearby Vlieland, but I was pleased to hear that we went over to annoy them in sixteen whatever. A very evocative little film, though it does nothing to make me want to brave the cold to experience it.

 

[Boathook]

I've set out in sunshine and then into thick fog in Poole Bay until I reached Studland when the sun apppeared again. A tiring 2 hours of motoring looking at the plotter with AIS and a separate radar screen. 50% of the boats didn't have AIS compared with the radar.

 

[Biggles Wader]

Half a century ago even big ships were very wary of fog. We were fogbound for a day or so in Hamburg which was expensive for the shipowner and the crew! No plotters or satnav then.

 

[johnalison]

Being prepared for fog should be in every sailor’s repertoire. I don’t mean that they must have radar, AIS or even a plotter, but sooner or later fog will happen and they should be able to cope and have some sort of plan, lifejackets, fog-horn etc, such that fog doesn’t cause actual alarm and failure to think. I liked the fog horn in the film, which looks exactly like our vintage model.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Being prepared for fog should be in every sailor’s repertoire. I don’t mean that they must have radar, AIS or even a plotter, but sooner or later fog will happen and they should be able to cope and have some sort of plan, lifejackets, fog-horn etc, such that fog doesn’t cause actual alarm and failure to think. I liked the fog horn in the film, which looks exactly like our vintage model.

To be clear, I entirely agree that if visibility decreases when on passage, you deal with it; been there, done that. But I don't think it's seamanlike to leave harbour in poor visibility.

 

[johnalison]

To be clear, I entirely agree that if visibility decreases when on passage, you deal with it; been there, done that. But I don't think it's seamanlike to leave harbour in poor visibility.

For me, that is too much of a sweeping generalisation. I have several times, not often but occasionally, left harbour with ‘harbour fog’ especially from Normandy and watched the weather clear as soon as we were clear of land, and felt very grateful that we didn’t have to spend another day in port. I can only remember one occasion when I would have certainly invoked your censure, which was when we had a short weather window to set off towards the Baltic but the forecast was a bit vague but included the possibility of poor visibility for a time. As it happened it did go down to about 1/4 mile for a few hours in the middle of nowhere, but we motored on with the radar set at 6 miles and by midnight it cleared fully. It didn’t feel reckless at the time, and even my wife felt quite relaxed about it. Maybe the Dover Strait would be different, but I think you would be at risk of toxic shock if I told you about our first club cruise to Calais in 1978.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

For me, that is too much of a sweeping generalisation. I have several times, not often but occasionally, left harbour with ‘harbour fog’ especially from Normandy and watched the weather clear as soon as we were clear of land, and felt very grateful that we didn’t have to spend another day in port. I can only remember one occasion when I would have certainly invoked your censure, which was when we had a short weather window to set off towards the Baltic but the forecast was a bit vague but included the possibility of poor visibility for a time. As it happened it did go down to about 1/4 mile for a few hours in the middle of nowhere, but we motored on with the radar set at 6 miles and by midnight it cleared fully. It didn’t feel reckless at the time, and even my wife felt quite relaxed about it. Maybe the Dover Strait would be different, but I think you would be at risk of toxic shock if I told you about our first club cruise to Calais in 1978.

Of course, I'd take local conditions into consideration. I'm well aware that things can change over short distances - I once did geological field work on the foreshore near Dunbar with frost in my beard, but less than a mile inland it was bright sun! And I think I'd have made the same decision as you given a forecast with a possibility of poor visibility. It's actual, present bad visibility that I wouldn't set off in.

 

[LittleSister]

We set out from Calais one time (actually on our way back from the Netherlands, but there had been strong adverse winds for days on end, and we'd hopped along the coast, dropping off most of the crew to catch ferries home as they had to be back for work). We left very early morning heading for Brighton (me having had very few hours sleep, for reasons I've explained in a previous tale) with a forecast of 'occasional fog patches'.

After just a few miles the fog set in with a vengeance. This may have been a 'fog patch', but it was a very dense one! We also discovered that It was, however, relatively shallow, so we could see the bridges of the largest ships, but knew we would be invisible to the eyes of those those looking out from those bridges, unless we were showing up on their radar, and we heard the fog-horns of numerous other (smaller?) ships around us without ever seeing them.

It emerged that the skipper's girlfriend had fallen down on her self-allotted role of organising the victuals, which for the previous weeks had been going well. We found we were almost out of water, so tea and coffee had to be rationed (a particular blow to sleep-deprived me), and had little more than a single tin of beans to last the three of us however long it might take to get somewhere or other. So we had metaphorical gloom aboard seemingly exacerbating the figurative gloom all around us.

I can't convey how nerve wracking it was for us passing across those lanes, staring into the whiteness, hearing ship's whistles seemingly all around us at random, and occasional big ships' bridges appearing above the fog heading towards us.

I was navigator, but relatively new to the game. No GPS or Radar, so it was dead reckoning, and we were getting further and further from our last known position, just outside Calais. I was relieved when the ship's whistles seemed to be falling behind us in accordance with where I thought we were past the ships' lanes. We saw Beachy Head pretty much where expected. With renewed confidence I plotted a course to lead us to some buoy that would be the beginning of our close approach to Brighton, and stared expectantly ahead as we approached its position, imagining 'my' buoy would soon appear out of the murk, but was to be disappointed - I saw nothing. With much less confidence I got us to what I thought was probably, or at least perhaps, off Brighton Marina, but we couldn't hear the fog signal at its entrance marked on the chart. The skipper cursed, and cast aspersions on the staff of the marina, suspecting they had neglected to sound it despite the thick fog.

We edged inshore very nervously. All of a sudden we could see the shore just a few hundred yards ahead of us: a beach thronged with people sunbathing and splashing at the water's edge! As we emerged out of the fog and into the sunshine we could see the Marina nearby, turned for it, stripped off the wooly hats, sailing jackets and pullovers we'd been in all day, and started readying lines and fenders.

Our particular 'occasional fog patch' had not only been a dense one, but had stretched virtually the entire width of the channel, and a substantial part of its length!

 

[LittleSister]

Another foggy trip emerges out of the mists of my memory. Coming back from Poole to Lymington, the fog came down. In the vicinity of Hengistbury Head the sounder showed the depths shallowing, and I said to my partner that was good as it confirmed where I thought we were: we were passing over the shallow bank projecting out to sea from that headland.

At which point out of the fog a beach appeared in front of us! I'd become disorientated, hadn't been paying sufficient attention to the compass, and had wandered off course shorewards!

Later, as we approached the western entrance of the Solent, we could hear a ship's whistle ahead of us, getting louder, so jilled around waiting for it to emerge, not wanting to confront it in Hurst Narrows. And jilled around some more. We eventually got fed up waiting for it, so headed in with trepidation, while the ship's whistle continued to sound ahead. It continued to sound ahead of us even as we passed Hurst Castle. Turned out the whistling was not from a ship heading out from the Solent, but the ferries trudging back and forth between Yarmouth and Lymington, miles from where we'd first heard them!

 

[johnalison]

I think that our fog passages often turn out to be the most memorable. I remember setting out for Alderney from St Helier in 1999. I know it was that year because that was our last season in the Sadler 29 and my first with GPS as well as the nearly defunct Decca. The forecast was iffy but not too off-putting and we left St H and turned left before hitting the fog. We made our way up past Alderney without seeing much and then had to enter Braye with a cross-tide of several knots and nothing to see. GPS was still in its pre-Clinton jumpy days but I can still remember steering south with my little Magellan set in my hands with its arrow a good 40 degrees off the straight-line course telling me where to steer to counter the stream. After ten minutes of apprehension it was reassuring to find ourselves exactly midway between the entrance mole and the rocks to the east and to be able to just see both at the same time.