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First night cruise

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delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Initially Posted - 07/21/2012 : 22:10:54

Yesterday I went to a conference in downtown Seattle with a friend of mine. We left around 9:30 and since we were pretty close to the boat I offered to take him out on SL for a little cruise around Elliott Bay.

I decided that with everything else to keep track of, actually sailing might not be the best idea, so I opted to just motor. Our marina is very well lit, so getting out was no particular big deal, however as soon as I turned downstream to head out to the bay, all that changed. Everything is quite different, you have to figure out what all the lights mean, just getting through the bascule bridge right outside of my marina took me a while to figure out where the right line was. With that in mind, I just oozed along till things made sense. Once we got out into the main channel, it was a bit easier, plus I know the area pretty well. It'd be a whole lot more daunting to go into somewhere you've never been for the first time at night. Once we made the final turn, we could hear an engine somewhere out in front of us, but couldn't see any lights. Pretty soon a small power boat came into view heading upriver with no lights and a boat full of people and going way too fast. As we cleared the mouth of the river, there's an anchorage for barges that I wanted to avoid, the barges are hard enough to see, but their moorings are even harder to see. I know there are three of them out there, but I only saw one, which worried me.

Once out into the bay, we continued to motor slowly and headed east directly toward Seattle. We heard a ship's horn, but had no idea where it was coming from. There are so many lights that you can't easily tell what's a vessel and what's something on shore. My friend isn't a sailor, but he's spent a fair amount of time on power boats, and I'd asked him to help me keep his head on a swivel. Fortunately, it quickly became evident that it was one of the ferries heading out, and they were no where near our track. I remembered that I had my AIS app on my phone, so I turned that on and that made a difference in being able to track the larger vessels, and it was surprisingly accurate. My friend took several pictures, but they didn't turn out very well.

Here's the Space Needle:

We ran east till we were about 500 yards or west of shore, and then headed north. We motored slowly along the shore line taking in the view. AIS was telling me there was a freighter headed in our general direction, and it's tug was headed out to meet it. We'd seen the lights of the tug up north of us, and thought he was going to push the freighter into the grain pier still to our north. I decided to give them a very large berth and headed back west toward Duwamish Head. As it turned out, this was a good plan, they continued south to the working piers south of SafeCo Field, right through where we'd been earlier. Again, AIS let us keep track of him. It's not radar, but it's still very helpful and very accurate if there are commercial vessels around you.

Here's the Seattle Eye (or whatever it's called):

We motored over to the Duwamish Head marker, and then turned south hugging the shore again because I know the barges I mentioned earlier are about a 1/3 of a mile offshore or so. On our way back, we came across a barge we'd never seen on the way out, and wouldn't have seen except that it was backlit by shore lights. I kept well clear of it, but right about that time a large-ish vessel separated from the shore lights to our starboard bow (the barge was to our port). We watched him for a while and could only see his port and mast lights, so he was running perpendicular to our course from right to left. I slowed down to let him continue across our bow maybe 300 yards ahead of us, until I could see his stern light, then I turned to port to follow him to the mouth of the Duwamish.

We made our turn into the river and had an uneventful ride back up to outside the marina. The tide was ebbing, and the river was moving right along, and joy of joys, the wind was almost exactly the other direction, which insured an interesting landing in my slip. I turned down the fairway and was going about 1.2k in neutral. I usually try to ooze down the fairway at about 0.4-0.6 knots, so I was going twice as fast as I wanted to. I bled speed in reverse, and tried to pick out my slip out ahead of us, not so easy to do even with the good lighting. Unfortunately, bleeding speed meant losing steerage, so I tried to ease almost to a stop about six slips before ours so I could use a burst of forward to goose us into the slip. Well, that didn't work out so well, as soon as I turned, the wind pushed my bow around (which was actually kinda good), but the current just pushed me right past our slip. I gave it a burst in reverse to get me back out into the center of the fairway, but the current was now carrying me sideways down stream, and I had a big power boat immediately behind me, and several sailboats in front of me. I had to work the boat around backwards, backing & filling and keeping from hitting the boats in front or back, and then just motored in reverse back up the fairway. I backed about six or seven slips past my slip, and then then goosed it into forward to try another shot at it. This time I slid right into the slip like I knew what I was doing. I got a giant adrenalin rush from the whole thing, and was spun up for about fifteen minutes or so afterward, enough so to amuse my friend who thought I'd managed the whole thing with aplomb.

Apologies for the slightly too large pictures, they're on my friend's photo service and I can't resize them there.

David
C-250 Mainsheet Editor

Sirius Lepak
1997 C-250 WK TR #271 --Seattle area Port Captain --

Edited by - delliottg on 07/21/2012 22:19:06

glivs
Admiral

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USA
836 Posts

Response Posted - 07/22/2012 : 04:23:18

Great story! One of the thrills of "sailing" to me is not going fast but continually learning. Thanks for sharing.

Edited by - on

redeye
Master Marine Consultant

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3476 Posts

Response Posted - 07/23/2012 : 03:57:40

I love night sailing/navigating.

That is wild when you have so many lights, and traffic. Not only do you have to watch out for the lights, but you have to try to figure out if you are seeing a black hole with lights missing, indicating something is out there without lights blocking the lights.

Your eyes take up to 30 minutes to fully dark adapt, so I'm definitely running red lights only, and I hate it when I hafta light something up with the spotlight, but I sure keep it at hand.

Spending the night out and motoring in in the dark to make it to work by 6:30am I hafta cross a line of buoys I sometimes run parallel to the line of them till I see one blocking the reflected light from the streetlamps at the marina and then head to that one rather than lighting it up.

Some kinda area you have there for night sailing!

Edited by - on

Joe Diver
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
1218 Posts

Response Posted - 07/23/2012 : 07:29:33

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by redeye
 I love night sailing/navigating.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

X2....and this time of year, it's the only time to get out and have a reasonably good sail.

It was 111 Saturday with very little wind during the day....but once the sun went down, and it cooled off to the upper 90's....and the warm lake water started interacting with the cooler night air to generate a breeze....

Now we're in the first quarter waxing moon so it's dark, but only a couple weeks away from those full moon night sails!

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JohnP
Master Marine Consultant

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1520 Posts

Response Posted - 07/23/2012 : 09:58:34

The views of the familiar area change at night to a bunch of lights of various kinds, including a few navigational aids. It's interesting and challenging in most places to know what's what, unless it's the city of Seattle you're staring at!

Ditto on the full moon sailing!

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redeye
Master Marine Consultant

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3476 Posts

Response Posted - 07/23/2012 : 10:30:29

and just think... won't be long ( as the digital cameras get faster ) before we can photograph what we "see" at night...

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DaveR
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
2015 Posts

Response Posted - 07/23/2012 : 14:10:18

Sounds pretty dangerous to me, glad you had the AIS app. But what about the smaller boats that can still run you over so very quickly? I think I'd be wanting some night vision goggles, a huge spot and a few very loud air horns!

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delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

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USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 07/23/2012 : 14:52:21

It felt dangerous at first, but I was deliberately going slow because I knew my eyes weren't dark adjusted and everything was going to look different. After about 30-45 minutes, I was somewhat more at ease. It helped having someone else there who can look behind you so you don't have to keep looking over your shoulders so much.

I don't know that there's much you can do about someone running at night with no lights like the speed boat that came by. I'd made myself as visible as I could with my running lights, plus we were well lit from the cranes and warehouse lights on either side, so they should have been able to easily see me (which isn't really comforting), but we didn't see them till they were about 100 yards away. Fortunately they were on their side of the channel and passed us port to port at about 30-40 yards from us. It'd would have been a bit scarier if they'd been about 2-3 minutes earlier when we were in the narrower part of the river, plus they'd have come around a blind 30º corner at us with little warning, including sound.

The AIS app (Ship Finder) was pretty useful, but it'd be nice if they used dark-adapted eye friendly lighting on it. Every time I looked at it, which was fairly frequently after I remembered it, I was a bit blinded by it. However, the information it provided was worth the blindness I think.

The last time I was out at night on a boat that I can recall, the boat was a big ship, and I had nothing to do with aiming it. I was amazed at how fast the freighter (SS Maui) was moving through the bay, I didn't check his AIS data to see, but they were moving right along, and he was just a long low-ish shape with some lights on top, his nav lights were hard to pick out, even when I knew where to look. The tug on the other hand was easy to spot.

I've always hesitated to stay out late on the boat because I was fearful of what the dark would bring, but it wasn't so bad, and I'd be far more likely to stay later on the bay now without (much) fear of being out there in the dark. That'd change if it were somewhere I wasn't familiar with. There are definitely some things to bump into out there (unlit barge moorings come to mind, especially those with unlit barges attached to them).

Plus I got to learn how to find my slip in the "dark" of our marina, something else I was fearful of, but not any longer. That I blew my approach was a bit worrisome at the time, but I didn't hit anyone in the process (although it was a near thing), and I made the next landing easily. I just need to learn to better judge my speed. One of the problems was I didn't remember how to turn on my Depth/Speed gauge's light, so I kept having to shine my flashlight at it. As it turned out, this was just stupid, there's a little light icon on it, that, wait for it ... turns on the light. It was stupidly easy to turn it on, but even though I knew there was a light, I didn't take the time to figure it out because I didn't figure I needed it. Well, apparently I do, to judge speed for my landing. Easy lesson learned at no one's expense except a bit of my pride.

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Joe Diver
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
1218 Posts

Response Posted - 07/23/2012 : 16:14:45

Dark adaption is the key...

The hardest part for me is leaving the marina...my marina has really good lighting all along the docks and in the parking lots...plus many boat owners have christmas lights decorating their slips....heading out the channel, the flood gates are lit up with some serious lighting....so once you pass the breakwater you hit the dark lake. That's when it's most difficult for me. Once my eyes adapt out there I'm okay, and can see quite well actually.

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awetmore
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
1144 Posts

Response Posted - 07/23/2012 : 18:10:32

I've done very little night navigation. However I did have a good learning experience with a kayak instructor that I like (Bob from Rogue Wave Adventures). We were kayak camping in the San Juans on Doe Island, which has good visibility across Rosario Strait towards Cypress Island. We brought out our chart and used the marker symbols to identify all of the lights that could be seen on the horizon, then talked about how we'd navigate with them.

That is an easy thing that any cruising sailor could do on an evening in harbor to stay sharp.

I've replaced almost all of my lighting with LEDs, the last one will be near the table and I'm going to use a lower-power model that has both red and white to keep from blowing out my night vision.

The only night sailing and motoring that I've done has been on Lake Union, and the city lights are bright enough that it doesn't feel a whole lot different than sailing during the day.

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