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BOATING IN FOG
By Sandy Floe
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December 10, 2004. This item by Sandy Floe, from Day Island, was posted as part of a thread on a trawler web site I check frequently. With its cautions about large ships and vessel traffic lanes, the article bears closely on Bill Badgley's article, "Almost Contained by a Container Ship." Sandy Floe graciously granted permission to reprint his posting here. Sandy cruises his CHB39 trawler "Sea Eagle" to Alaska every other year, with the off years spent on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, "wherever the fishing and prawning are good." .
We spend a lot of time boating in the fog. We have to because of the kind of boating we like to do. The west coasts of the Pacific Northwest are fogged in much of the time in the last half of summer, and sometimes before that. The fog sometimes lasts for days and days.
We fish and cruise around the mouth of the Strait of Juan De Fuca. In that area there are a lot of the small recreational fishing boats, commercial charters, and large ships. All of the ships inbound and outbound to or from any port in Washington state and British Columbia (except Prince Rupert) go through there. Most of the smarter small (to 20+ feet) recreational fishing boats that fish around there have radar. These are the people who, along with ourselves, must cross the shipping lanes to get to their favorite grounds.
We never, never assume we can cross in front of large ships. We wait until they have passed. Sometimes there are four and five in a row, which can make for a long wait.
We don't trust that anyone can see us, even though we fly the biggest radar reflector we can find. That especially applies to being seen by the big bottom ships. Those big guys are moving at more than three times our trawler speed. If the fog is especially thick during a crossing we call VTS, tell them where we are, and request that they try to track our progress -- much like "flight following" for an airplane. There is a lot of traffic in and out of the strait so we sometimes feel like a turtle crossing a 2-lane highway.
We also practice fog running when there is no fog. In clear weather we'll watch how a large ship tracks across the radar screen and compare the track with what we actually see. It is good training and it's interesting. We keep our chart plotter and the radar on the same scale.
One thing we utilize is the traffic "separation zones." Separation zones lie between the inbound and outbound traffic lanes, and are generally off limits to the large ships. We run across a traffic lane and into the separation zone, and wait there for conflicting traffic to pass. I say the separation zones are "generally off limits" because once in a while ships do cross into them. If VTS cannot see any conflicting traffic they will sometimes give permission for the ship to proceed through the separation zone. We found that out the hard way a few years back. (Another reason to call VTS for flight following.)
I think the biggest hazard out there are the charter fishing boats. They go full speed through the fog, even where the little 16-foot recreational fishing boats congregate and are trolling slowly. If they would slow down they would add only five or so minutes to their run. They evidently don't have operating horns either. I have watched the radar in disbelief as they go charging through the little fleet.v
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