Re: [Paddlewise] Crossings in Fog

At 04:27 AM 4/10/98 -0700, dkruger_at_seasurf.com wrote:
>I'm interested in anecdotal descriptions of crossings kayakers have
>attempted under poor visibility (fog, mist, scudding clouds on the deck,
>poor lighting, etc.)...

I had the luck of being with an experienced kayaker on my first fog
crossing.  It was my first year of paddling and we had gone out for a 3 day
paddle.  At the beginning of day 3 we were about 15 miles from home and in
thick fog.  We wrote all of our headings on my chart before we started out.
We had about 4 course changes before we would get to our first landing, an
island about half way home.  We made sure the long crossings (1 to 2 miles)
had a big destination, like an island, while the short crossings sometimes
had just a nun or bell as the mark.  With my friend's experience, all marks
were made and we came out of the fog just before the half way point.

Since that first trip which, by the way, made me very, very nervous at the
time, I've done a number of other crossings on my own or with less
experienced paddlers.  The most memorable was one at the start of a mostly
foggy 3-day weekend.  My partner and I were headed for a small island for
our first night and when we got to the put-in there was dense fog.  The
first island that we would pass was just 1/4 mile away and we couldn't see
it.  We took headings for the two marks we needed and wrote them on my
chart.  The first mark was an island about a mile out and we hit it just as
expected.  The second was a further 3 miles with a smaller island off to our
left about 2/3 of the way.  As we headed out from our first mark to our
second, we didn't realize that we were already in trouble.  You see, I have
a compass with every 20 degrees clearly marked with the degree number.  We
needed to maintain a heading of 230 degrees.  I looked at the nearest marked
degree tick, saw that it was 220 degrees, and headed for the unmarked tick
on the compass that was to one side of the 220 degree tick.  Unfortunately,
I was on the WRONG side of 220 degrees.  So, as we started out, our heading
was 210 degrees rather than 230.  We passed the smaller island to the left,
not realizing that we were far too close to it.  Time passed and we realized
that we should have reached our destination by then.  Very fortunately,
there was a larger island behind the one we were looking for and we
eventually came to it.  After realizing what I had done, we found our way to
a known point and then found our "missing" island.  The lesson I learned:
Be very, very careful with readings from a compass. If you're on an
un-numbered tick, make sure the number you're applying to it is valid from
both sides.  If I'd done that, I would have realized that the mark I was
heading on was between 220 and 200 on my compass and that surely was not the
230 degrees that I should have been on.
			Bill Ridlon
			Southern Maine Sea Kayaking Network

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