Michael Daly said: > ......... Around here (eastern Great Lakes), the > shipping lanes are used by big ships, but the rest of the > water is open to anyone with appropriate draft. Hence, even > when out of shipping lanes, it can be open season on kayakers > by small boat owners. > > It should also be noted that much of the Great Lakes are deep > waters and shipping lanes are few - primarily near ports. > Big ships can go almost anywhere outside of these lanes. Mike, Here in Southern CA with major ports at Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Port Hueneme, all of the ships that are going to one of these, have to enter the Santa Barbara Channel which then leads into the San Pedro Channel. There are very definite navigation lanes where the commercial ships have right of way. It is a violation of "The Rules" to do anything to that interferes with any of the commercial ships in these lanes. That includes causing them to slow down. Fines can be as high as $10,000 for violating this rule although I'm not sure what the "normal" fine has been. The ships are very predictable, and as Duane Strosaker said, it is really easy to avoid becoming one of their speed bumps. It's the guy in the sailboat or powerboat who's had a few beers that scares me. Most of our water is extremely deep, so there are very few restrictions based on draft. Steve Holtzman *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Sep 22 2004 - 17:47:25 PDT
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