[ursa minor]

In the interest of adding to several recent threads on boating safety, I thought I'd share this experience from a few minutes ago. We were returning from dinner with friends on a nearby island on this beautiful clear night heading north in the area of Chases Point, Little Bear and Whortelberry Islands. Just us from what I could see, except for a single green light.

I kept watching the green and other lights on shore to try and get an idea on range as I couldn't see a white "all around" light. I'm figuring it's somewhere the other side of the Six Pack closer to the Long Island bridge but instead it's actually a 40 foot or so cruiser about 300 feet in front of us just sitting in place. I altered course to pass behind and at this point I can see not only a white light on the transom but a white light above the hard top over the helm.

No harm, no foul as we never got any closer than 250-300 feet or so but I'm really paying attention and still (almost) missed a 40 foot boat. Yikes!

We stopped and looked back, now all we can see is a red light, no white at all. We ended up motoring back at headway speed and circling behind them and hailing them. I apologized for being a little close and told them I hadn't seen their all around light. They called back, looked up and realized their mast had slipped somehow so that the light was hidden behind something else on the hard top. Again no harm, no foul, the eyeballs still work but wow, I almost ran over a 40 foot boat on a perfect night in an area I know extremely well. (They did fix the light right away.)

The point to this PSA is please, please, please, if you're going to be running at night be sure that ALL your running lights are working and visible. It's really important. None of us wants to be a statistic and end up on the evening news...