What's the candlepower on your average lightship? If you get one, I was wanting to do the Columbia River Bar in winter, at night. So let me know when you are ready to rent it out and/or lease at cheap kayak rates. :-) As for the substantive issue of loss of night vision, it is real and does impact night activities (well, all those outside of the bedroom). Once I had determined that bright headlamps were counterproductive to rougher waters night paddling, I picked full-moon nights and eventually worked up to moonless nights. For rock garden night work you must have some ambient light in anything over a meter - half a meter for an unknown portion of coast. For routine night paddling, non of this is an issue for me - not that I can remember the last night paddle I went out on that wasn't rough. It's that old ascending order of fascination thing which really is my nemesis, ergo, backing off paddling in 2008. However, it's a new year... Doug Lloyd One of the problems with winter is the long night. All that dark. It just makes it so darn difficult to see rocks, anchored boats, defective buoys and such. At first I tried no lights at all but my eyes aren't what they were when I was younger so, like Doug, I started searching for something that would make night paddling more enjoyable. But there was really nothing suitable. So I came up with a better idea. THE SURPLUS LIGHTSHIP I figured that the current economic conditions might have affected more than just private boat owners desperately trying to dump their 1970s boats using craigslist. There might be one or two governmental organizations or museums or such. And boy did I strike gold! Craigslist in Washington, D.C. turned out to be a wellspring of government issued but no longer in service equipment. The battleship Missouri was, I felt, a bit too conspicuous to anchor in Deception Pass so I found the old Lightship Relief moored in a disused basin just off the Columbia River near Astoria. There needs to be some simple alterations. I'm going to have to disable the rotating mechanism and set up a system to aim the light at exactly the places I want to paddle. But in general I think that the lightship idea is, like the mothership idea, going to really take off. I'll keep ya posted. :) Craig Jungers Don't worry... you'll see me *************************************************************************** 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 Sun Jan 11 2009 - 10:31:05 PST
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