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Anchor lights
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There's a really nasty trend among cruisers nowadays to dispense with
showing an anchor light, or to try to save a few amp-hours by using some
dinky little toy light. This is both foolish and inconsiderate.
Why not showing an anchor light is really dumb:
- What if a boat is entering the anchorage on a dark night, using
GPS and a chartplotter, but without radar? What if they
collide with your unlit anchored boat?
- Suppose a local boat is going fishing, or is coming home on an
overcast, moonless night. What if they collide with your boat
at high speed?
- What if a bunch of inebriated cruisers tearing home after a party
run into your (unlit) boat?
- What if the wind comes up and the boat ahead of you is dragging,
but can't see where your (unlit) boat is?
- What if you're caught in a sudden squall on a dark night and think
you're dragging, but can't be sure because the other 5 (or 10, or
50) other boats in the anchorage aren't showing anchor lights?
Not Good Enough - Inadequate Lights
- The latest fashion is to buy those little solar-powered lawn and
garden lights and stick one of them up somewhere. These things are completely useless as anchor lights. I got one and
ran around with the dinghy one night to see if it was any good.
The single white LED was nearly invisible from only one or two boat
lengths
away, particularly as the night wore on and the Ni-Cad batteries
discharged.
-
I've also seen lights made with dinky little 1 or 2 watt bulbs,
hanging in the cockpit where it's obscured by the dodger, sails, or
whatever, over a very large sector. Folks, these things are a
joke.
January, 2006: Tarawa, Kiribati. Tarawa was
the site of one of the first amphibious landings ever attempted on a
large scale by the US Marines. Betio island was heavily fortified
by the Japanese and was attacked on 20 November, 1943. After
several days of intense fighting, the Marines overwhelmed the defenders
and secured the island. 1,143 US troops were killed, and over
2,300 wounded. Japanese losses were over 5,000, if I recall
correctly.
There is a huge amount of war debris on Tarawa,
including a great deal of live ammunition ranging from .30 caliber rifle
shells, through grenades, bombs, and 16 inch shells from the battleship
Maryland.
These are two of the Japanese 8" coastal defense
batteries. The barrels were manufactured by Whitworth in England
in 1899 and eventually sold to Japan. These are massive
guns. The barrels alone weight 41,440 pounds (it's stamped on the
barrels).
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