There was a brief fragment of a thread recently about nighttime boating. I had two rather intense nighttime boating experiences this past week, and I thought I'd share a few things I learned.
I had two trips planned last week to go fishing for bluefin tuna. In both cases, we left the dock at 2:00 am, in order to start fishing at first light.
My boat lives on North Bay in Cotuit. My boat draws too much to get out the Cotuit Bay entrance, and the Osterville drawbridge doesn't open in the middle of the night. Therefore, I have to make a long and convoluted trip out North Bay, through Cotuit Bay, down the Seepuit River, and then out West Bay through the Wianno Cut. All told, it's at least 2 miles of twisty narrow channel.
Here are some of the things I learned:
1) Remote-controlled spotlights are a great help in tight quarters. I basically navigated the channel by lighting up each set of bouys in succession. Having the spotlight be remote controlled allowed me to keep both hands on the wheel as I drove. You do have to be very careful to keep your spotlight aimed at the water at all times, as it is a federal crime to illuminate the bridge of another boat.
2) The spotlight doesn't do much when you're running. Wednesday morning I navigated out of the channel, started running at about 20 knots towards our destination with radar on, spotlight illuminating the water ahead of us, and somewhere in the first 3 miles got about 50 feet of polypropylene rope wrapped around my prop. End of trip.
3) Carry a waterproof flashlight. We had a mask and snorkels on board. We had a flashlight on board. The flashlight wasn't waterproof. We had to wait until daylight to clean the rope off the prop.
4) Go out in the daytime and use a differential GPS to save waypoints for your journey. Friday it wasn't just dark, it was foggy & dark. I couldn't always pick up the next bouy with my spotlight, but I had the whole channel waypointed & was able to navigate that way. Tense, but it works.
5) Distances are really hard to judge at night. I crossed paths with another boat, whose running lights I could see clearly. I thought we were still about a mile apart until I glanced at my radar and saw that he was only about 1/4 mile away. The same thing happened with several lighted bouys.
6) Running at night is a lot more tiring than running in the daytime. You concentrate harder and worry more. At the end of a three hour drive out to the tuna grounds, I felt like I'd been running all day. Don't push it if you're already tired.
By the way, no tuna.
Frank