RADAR required in the Northeast???

[MoonSailer]

All of my sailing has been in areas where fog is rare. I admit that it was pretty scarey to have a ship and a barge just disappear and to just hope not to get ran down. Actually I took evasive action and went out of the channel into 15' water where the ship and barge were unlikely to travel.
But my daughter and family now live in MA and they have fog regularly so I am told. But on a recent trip I noticed that many boats did not have RADAR.
As a second question any tips on sailing the NE??? On the gulf coast I have ran aground many times. BUT usually this is a non event as the bottom is usually sand or mud and the tidal range is small so we have never had to be towed off . But looking around Rockport,MA the shore seems to be hard!!!! Granite hard!!!! Looking at charts the bottom seems to come up suddenly and there seems to be rocks everywhere. Again in the Gulf the bottom usually comes up gradually and once you are in 30' of water the chances of hitting something(other than an oil rig) is fairly small. Anchoring?? Again sand and mud usually give great holding down here. We have commited to going as far north as Chesapeak Bay but with a little encouragement might consider the great white north.

 

[Tom Spohn]

Why are you running aground? Do you have charts on board and know how to read them. How about a chartplotter? Don't know about the NE, but in our foggy waters a good chartplotter with a radar overlay and AIS work well to keep us out of harms way.

 

[Maine Sail]

Not necessary..

It's not necessary but it's certainly a good idea. We sailed for years and years without either radar or GPS/Loran and we did it in the fog quite often. It's nearly impossible to avoid fog up here and in the old days you just dealt with it and used your skills, you know, the ones most no longer know or practice these days..

We do sail a lot more in the fog than we used to before instruments, and it's to the point where it does not even phase us, and the advent of plotters and good small boat radar systems makes it more comfortable.

As for running aground you'd better get that squared away before you head North. In this day and age of cheap plotters there is very little excuse for running aground. They draw little power and can be mounted at the helm so you can check them often.. If you run aground up here it will usually end your trip!

P.S. Radar overlay is one of my favorite features of the new plotter/radar displays!!

If you hit rocks using one of these you might be a good candidate for a Darwin award..

 

[TimCup]

moonsailor- I'm a southern guy, too-

And sailing in fog would feel scary enough to take the fun out of it. Maybe I read it wrong, but Tom's reply was kinda rude.

Yeah, we have it made- sand bottom, no rocks, little if any fog. grounding here is embarrassing, not damaging. I've never sailed in the northeast or northwest, but knowing where you are, and who's around you, is big.

Ignorance there is unforgivable. Here, it's a way of life. Anyone with a couple of grand can be out on the water tomorrow. There's no fear. Wear a pfd, and you can float in our 75 degree water for as long as it takes to be picked up. Darwin's rules don't apply here!

cup

 

[Don S/V ILLusion]

radar seems like cheap insurance

Having a radar is only necessary when you sail in or can get caught sailing in fog, the dark or bad weather - the obvious...
If any of the above can happen to you, I guess the better question is why wouldn't you want a radar?
It is quite common to get fog on any given day in either the summer or early fall here in NE and every time I've had to sail in fog, the trip started out in good weather and turned unexpectedly and usually at the worst time.
I guess the best indicator might be just looking around our marina which comtains approx 100 sailboats - simply scanning the near-horizon at masts, virtually all have a radar; some have two.
A chart in the fog is useless - get a chartplotter and radar if you intend on sailing here.

 

[All U Get]

I thank the individual that convinced me to buy radar everytime I see him. Radar puts out a signal that other boats receive better than a deflector. With mine I get everything from lobster pots to big boats and sometimes floatsam. The one thing I missed in the fog was a 42' sailboat which passed by with no radar and finally appeared within 1/2 mile going away. Main Sails icon shows a sunny day in Casco Bay.
All U Get

 

[bffatcat]

fog

Ive been sailing in MA bay for over 50 years. Most of the New england fog is in Maine I cant remember more than 3 foggy days this season in MA and it usually burns off by noon. I wouldnt worry to much about it. the coast of Maine is a different story. The water is a lot colder and there is Fog.

Bffatcat

 

[John Nantz]

Radar - nice to have

It depends on your schedule - if you HAVE to be somewhere and can't wait then radar would be good to have.

I still remember an early fall day sail from Point Judith to Block Island in our daysailer. It was a beautiful day and a great sail. We were only one of two boats in the harbor that weekend, the other one being a 50 ft or so crewed sport fisher owned by some guy who owned a lot of billboards in Rhode Island. We decided to stay overnight and got a room at the local hotel.

The next day ..... it was pea soup! You couldn't see hardly a hundred feet or so, but I had brought a compass along (used for surveying) and since I had to be back at work on Monday morning and there was basically no wind we decided to leave. A breeze picked up (but the fog didn't) and we sailed past the northern tip of the island in what was probably some kind of rip tide.

Trying to maintain a compass course and some kind of correction for current in a bouncing and leaning boat with no horizon was difficult. Several hours later we saw land and it turned out to be the Point Judith breakwater! Dumb luck! We hit the entrance almost dead on!

The point I wanted to make was, if you gotta be somewhere at a certain time then it would make sense to have radar.

However, radar isn't a regulatory requirement but a nice-to-have instrument. On the other hand, appropriate sound signals are a requirement and running an air horn by hand gets old. We've got a loud hailer that automatically sends out the appropriate signal (under power, under sail, AND, aground!). Such a deal (as they say in New York).

One really nice thing about the loud hailer is that the the horn which I clamp onto the pulpit seat (with a wire back to the forward hatch) is far away from the cockpit (so I don't have to be deafened by the noise), is one can hear noises ahead via the horn and the talk-back system. It amplifies noises like buoy bells, boat motors, people in fishing boats talking, etc. This is a very nice feature.

Another non-requirement are radar reflectors, so other boats with radar can see you, or see you better.

Radar is an aide, not a cure-all. Like what was mentioned before, it can pick up all kinds of junk and at the same time NOT pick up a target you really needed. And, something to keep in mind, it can have difficulty seeing though wet sails.

We have good memories of late season sailing on Narraganset Bay and up into some of the sloughs, with the fall colors of red and yellow leaves, bright dark-blue sky, a nip in the air, good breezes....

In the Northwest when we get fog it is often accompanied by Oregon Mist..... you know, missed Oregon and hit Washington.

 

[TT23844]

Yes, for collision avoidance AND navigation. Also a good quality radar reflector is , or should be, mandatory.

 

[MoonSailer]

There is a lot of Thin Water in the gulf of mexico

Yes, for collision avoidance AND navigation. Also a good quality radar reflector is , or should be, mandatory.

Mobile Bay about 31 miles long and 24 miles wide is only an average of 10' deep!!!!! Lots of times I've sailed for miles in 6-8' of water. With the sand dunes there is often deep water near the dunes but you have to go through areas of thin water to get to the deep water. Then there are hurricanes!!!! Hurricanes can move around a lot of sand so that what was deep becomes shallow. Often this is not reflected on current charts. For what it's worth I haven't ran aground in almost 3 years on a lake.
I am going to explore getting a radar unit. It is probably cheap insurance. But as to GPS on a recent trip using a GPS The map showed me off of the road for several miles!!!!! I am talking 1/4 mile off the road which is far enough to get you into trouble on a boat.

 

[Chuck Creel]

Re: There is a lot of Thin Water in the gulf of mexico

Agree with Roger,
There are lots of places that move around due to mother nature. Radar is NO help in this area below the water. There are however solutions to this called " FORWARD LOOKING SONAR ". The company is called interphase.

Check out the video's.

http://www.interphase-tech.com/videos.htm

 

[MoonSailer]

Re: There is a lot of Thin Water in the gulf of mexico

I wonder if I put a fishfinder transducer on a stick and pointed it forward if I could have the same results for under $100.00 from Walmart??? I have a $88 Priranha fishfinder that is not being used in my garage. That is going to be tonight's progect. I need a rig to use in my canoe for fishing so if it can serve double duty getting me into a strange anchorage all the better!!!! Just put the wife up on the bow with the fish finder on a stick. Maybe power the thing with a motorcycle battery or some other rechargable 12 volt system. I guess some rechargable C cells in series would work and would be smaller and lighter. Even mount the fish finder screen on the pole.

 

[Tim R.]

Radar is good

I have always had radar on my cruising boats in Maine. When my Furuno died last summer, I replaced it immediately with a Garmin GMR18 which allows overlay on my 3206. Not quite as nice as Maine Sail's HD unit but still very effective. I would be very leery of not having a radar in Maine as it can come up very suddenly and unpredictably. Our worst fog month is July but I only had 3 days all season this year when it affected me. Like Maine Sail, with radar, fog has become less of an issue. We don't let it keep us at the mooring like we used to. In fact it can be very nice sailing in the fog.

Another good reason to have radar is it helps to make friends. I have had boaters without ask to follow me back to port on numerous occasions.

 

[Al - s/v Persephone]

Moon Sailer -

My cruising is pretty much limited to the East Coast between 40N and 45N. That qualifies as NE, but is hardly uniform in the amount of fog it gets.

The amount of fog we get is determined by how big a temperature difference exists between the water and warm air fronts moving in over it. That's why even Maine gets less fog in September than in June - the ocean warms up.

We cruise south to the warmer (60+ degree) waters of Nantucket Sound in Spring, and save places like Penobscot Bay (with sub-50 degree water in Spring) for September.

The "hard stuff" around Rockport to which you refer is probably the Dry Salvages or The Londoner or one of the other little unpleasantries around the end of Cape Ann. They do show up on radar - which is a very useful navigation tool for coastal navigation in general - even when it's clear.

After you get used to coastal navigation by radar, there will then be little difference in avoiding such "hard spots" in fog or in clear vsby.

My last boat didn't have a chartplotter as my present one does, but be assured that it had radar.

The chartplotter can overlay the radar image on the chart, showing how close to reality the present vector-drawn chart is at the present location.

However, I still keep a pure radar window displayed beside it - I know from past experience that it will show me buoys much farther away than the larger scale chart displays for navigating which leave them out until you're on a smaller scale for entering a harbor.

As to amounts of "hard stuff" in the NE, it varies widely. From Cape Ann to Cape Elizabeth, there is a lot of sand and sloping (lee) shores. From Cape Elizabeth to Mount Desert Island, there are mostly bold shores with deep water close in (and strong well-defined radar images) - but lots of isolated (but well-charted) rocks.

Even Rockport, with its rock-strewn approaches is located in "Sandy Bay" - whose name betrays its bottom's anchor-friendly and rock-free nature.

Just N of Cape Small and Seguin Island there is a passage between The Sisters and Black Rocks. Both are nasties and charted, but only The Sisters are buoyed.

On radar, both sets of ledges/rocks and that buoy stand out at a range farther than you're likely to notice them even in good vsby. Lots of time to plan and manage your course between them before you get to them.

If you're used to navigating by radar, it gives you much more freedom to cruise on your own terms - but that requires consideration of the need to assume that anyone you see on radar does not see you and must be avoided by YOU.

(Such as the big dragger blasting down New Bedford Reach at 10kts in 0.1nm vsby and missing us by 2 boat lengths - with his radar antenna rotating.)

Avoiding all hazards - stationary and moving - that show on your radar is your responsibility. The radar does make it much easier to see them at a range that allows you to do so without undue drama.

You can certainly cruise without radar, but will be much safer and confident with it if your cruising is coastal (and you use it often - not just in fog).

The New England coast is justifiably known as one of the world's great coastal cruising venues. Maine alone has 5,000 miles of coastline. The number of coves and harbors, many with 400+ years of history, provide an almost never-ending set of daysail-apart destinations.

Fair winds,
Al
s/v Persephone

 

[Ross]

Try to remember that the last ice age scraped away all of the soft stuff in New England waters and just left the rocks. Most of the rocks have been plotted but you gotta pay attention.