Re: [Paddlewise] Night Gear and red LEDs

I was shaking my head at this train of thought, and finally decided that
this looked like a good place to jump in.

On land, how far can you reaal see those little blinkey things??
At sea, the thing to think about is, Will I Be SeeN?!?!?
If you have ever looked for a sailboat running lights, then remember, those
were 5 watts each! and maybe found by accident at a range of 1-2 mi.
Here you are, sitting with your backside lower than your waterline, talking
about putting your life under a few milliwatts of LED going blinkey blink.

The rule does state that a rower/paddler carries a flashlight, etc and turn
it on as needed, but the bigger and better lit your light is, the less
likely you will get splatted by a tugboat on his way to dinner.  

The reason for not going outside of the rule, is that this way others know
what they are looking at, and what their resposibility, etc is toward you.
As an example, mounting that white light on your mast/helmet makes you a
small motorboat, going from the most priviliged class of vessel (rowing) to
the least (motor), and the red/green set puts you in the middle with the
sailboats.  As far as colours that blink, "aids to navigation" have, in
white, red, or green, anything from "quick flash" at "in excess of" 90
flashes per minute to 6 or sometimes as low as 1.  Whtch bouy does  _your_
bike light look like?  And if you didn't know it was there, how far away
would you see it??

All in all, there are good reasons for the rules of the road, and if you go
out on a "navigable" waterway, you NEED to know them. They tell you not only
what type of boat is approaching, but also what he should be doing, which
way he is going, what he is carrying/pulling, etc

A really good comprehencive source for all of this is "Piloting, Seamanship,
and Small Boat Handling", by Charles Chapman.

On the other hand, NEVER nevernever............   point a high powered light
like a searchlight at the bridge of anything except in the last seconds, as
after that, they wont be able to see you or anything else and can't tell
which way to turn.

I also feel compelled to point out that your best defence is to find them
first, and remember that a rather large fast commercial boat can be really
dark and amazingly quiet, if you just heard the wake then it's way to late. 

As a simple way to get a good light cheap, think about a 12 volt lead/acid
battery like they put in computer power backups and (I think) camcorders
which hold about 10 amp/hours, or 12 watts for longer than we get darkness
in the lower 48 states, or quite a few critical minutes  of  a 30 watt
halogen searchlight.  The whole mess weighs less than 10 lbs.


At 08:02 AM 5/9/98 -0700, rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com wrote:
>> Again which regulaton?, since what I found in the USCG booklet was that only
>> white lights that flash between 50 & 70 times per second are considered
>> distress signals. This would imply that things like bicycle blinky LED's
>> would be OK - The down side would be if they distract other boaters into
>> thinking you're in trouble, in which case it doesn't matter what the regs
>> say since it's not fair to your fellow boater to put them through that type
>> of adreneline rush.
>
>I think you mean per minute as per second would look like a continuous
>light.  But I am not trying to be cute.  The problem with any flasing
>light is that it can be mistakened for something else.  If you had a
>white light the was at a greater or less a frequency than that of a
>strobe, whose counting the intervals?  A flashing light is a flashing
>light.  Same for red or green.  Various navigational aids like buoys
>have flashing red or green lights.  There flash may be at a much lower
>rate than the bike flashing lights, say every 5 seconds, but unless
>conditions are absolutely calm, your flashing LED light going at 1 flash
>a second (or whatever rate) could be obscured here and there by swells
>or movement of your paddle or turned head so that to an onlooker on a
>boat it may seem to be a buoy.
>
>So say someone is coming in through a channel, sees your red flashing
>light, mistakes it for a buoy, goes to the left of it and hits
>something.  That is why no flashing lights of any color on the water to
>be used on any type of vessel.  White flashing lights in distress strobe
>use are the exception.
>
>I really wish the rule weren't this way.  There is no question that
>running a strobe or LED lights on a night outing would make your
>presence known.  Maybe christmas tree lights strung around the entire
>perimeter of your boat would do the trick. :-)
>
>It just shows how extra careful you need to be at night.
>
>best,
>
>ralph
Jonathan and Nadine MacLane, San Diego, Cal. USA.
jonathan_at_lanz.com


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