Quote:
Originally Posted by LIforrelaxin
Codeman, you have hit the nail squarely on the head, boating at night is difficult. As many hours as I have logged, rarely go out at night and when I do I try my best to stay away from everyone. I am always more vigilant in my look out techniques and everything. I think quite often people don't realize all the difficulties of navigating at night, and don't know how to kick in a extra level of situational awareness.
I am not implying that either capt in this case was at all negligent... just say that night time boating requires a entire different level of awareness.
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Quoted for truth ! The "problem" with boating at night is that there's very little visual cues as to how far away a boat is. During the daytime a glance is sufficient to know if another boat is danger close and to assess it's general heading. At night all you have are points of light that must be observed for a period of time to get the above. I'm curious, it was written that both parties didn't see the other's lights until the "last second". That's a bit different from seeing them and not realizing they were too close. While I agree it may be harder to pick out a boat heading directly towards (or worse, directly away from) you, I've found the red/green sidelights standout pretty well from the background of cabin and house and other lights. Also both boats "swerved to the left" ??? Given the damage shown on WMUR's vid, I'll take that to mean each turned to port which is a bit odd (depending on the circumstances of course). I wonder just where btw Sandy and L Bear Is this happened ? That's an open stretch of water w/o obstructions.
ps - I was told in no uncertain terms that the Littlefield "accident" (all by itself) was proof positive that a
25 mph speed limit was needed. I wondered then what would happen when we had one at less than that speed. So ... time for a 15 mph limit ? Or shall "we" start determining the root causes and address them instead ?