Un illuminated stupidity

[Guest]

Visited the Bournemouth fireworks on friday with a couple of other boats, and I was amazed at the amount of craft on the way back in with NO nav lights.

One boat in Poole harbour had no mast head light, no stern light and was towing another boat with no lights on at all !!!!...........it was pure luck we saw him.

 

[Guest]

It is not just small boats who do that. Some years ago I was returning late in the dark to KIP marina on the Clyde. I was crossing roughly West to East which is across the main shipping lanes. The boat I had at the time was a Fairline Mirage and had no radar so we were keeping our eyes peeled. I became vaguely aware of a shape looming in the dark and put the boat hard over to port and just missed a totally unlit large ship doing circa 15 knts down the river. I was moderately p****d off to say the least. I tried calling him on VHF - no reponse. I then called Clyde Coastguard to report a ship causing a danger to traffic and discover that it was an American submarine support ship "on exercises". I made some remarks about driving blind on the Hudson instead of the Clyde if that's what they wanted to do but it was in my view totally irresponsible and unnecessary.

All part of life's rich tapestry!

Nick

 

[markc]

Re: Un illuminated stupidity -someone gets knicked

On Friday evening I went back to my boat in Haslar [about 11.30pm] and could hear a RIB wizzing around in the shipping lane inside Portsmouth harbour. He was doing this for a few minutes or so - no lights on, well, except when he had the Police launch searchlight on him and he was virtually rammed to a halt [it appeared]. The police were there for sometime with the blue lights flashing - some telling off was going on I should think!

Mark