we actually rescused an older chap who had fallen out of his dinghy at newport late one winters afternoon. he was fully dressed ie heavy and it was getting dim, and once we had motored past there was no-one else around. fortunately we saw him and dragged him onboard our cat (easy up the back steps). i honestly dont think we would have survived if we had missed him.
apparently his dinghy was caught athwart the mooring line of a boat while he was rowing and capsized. he then made the cardinal sin of trying to swim but was too old too cold and too heavy
anyway, a happy ending - but small rigid fiberglass dinghys can tip incredibly easily sometimes. RIBs on the otherhand are super safe, but hard to row and store. i've had many of both but these days it's a RIB with an outboard.
we've just got back to australia after 5 years living & cruising amonst the coral reefs & atolls of french polynesia, and a couple of things strike me about this incident ;
- there is no way we would ever move anywhere near land / reef at night. the only exception is the rare occasion in a super easy spot that we had visited before and we had the track on the chart plotter from previous visit to follow. to try and naviagte anywhere near a reef area at night is foolhardy to say the least
- areas away from shipping tracks are usually not well charted - maybe 50 years ago if at all. positions of reefs etc are very nebulous - mainly because whoever drew the chart did not have an accurate position to work from. there is no point knowing excatly where you are if the reef you think is half a mile away, is half a mile out of position. to get around this we used Open CPN a lot and it's a total life saver, but does not seem to be much used by coastal sailers - why ?
- very few cruisers use paper charts. they are too difficult to obtain / keep up to date. there is nothing wrong with electronic charts PROVIDED you use the correct level of zoom. this is the same as using the correct scale paper chart. and before the tradiionalsist say "what happens if the chart plotter fails", we always carry at least 2 and often 3 completely independent charting systems - exactly as per commercial shipping (which stopped using paper charts years ago)
as i understand it, SL has only changed if you are outside your subscription country for more than 30 days. if you are in australia and on an australian plan then : no problems
we on the otherhand are on a fiji plan (historically one of the cheapest around) and now back in australia, so it may be that on 17 sept SL tell us we have to change.
but who knows ? so much about SL seems quite random
cheers,
ps : as for SSB : no, we don't carry one. i also do not know how to make horseshoes...
