A fiberglass or wood boat is not going to come up as clearly on radar as will a steel boat. Image capture by Severin Knutsen.Ī boat’s hull material affects how well it can be “seen” by a ship’s radar. Radar image from bridge of outbound ship (center), small vessels in inbound lane. “Ultimately,” said Knutsen, “we’re charged with protecting the waterways, the environment and the public while we make sure commerce is flowing.” When a ship loses sight of a small boat ahead of it, the pilot will often contact nearby tugs helping him to maneuver, in order to get “eyes on” the boat that might be in a dangerous spot. While there’s a legal requirement that a ship has to be able to see you two ship lengths or 500 meters ahead, whichever is less, it gets especially worrisome in narrow channels when ships are going slower and have less maneuverability. It can take a big ship a quarter to a half mile to change course enough to avoid you, and they can sometimes throw big wakes. Make a clear course change go astern of it. The bottom line is, if a ship is blowing its whistle at you, get out of the way. “The other communications tool we have is our whistles.” (To most ears they sound like fog horns.) “We try to make course changes significant and early, so people know, ‘okay, the ship’s going that way, I can go this way and stay safe,’ he added. So, the main means of communication for the ship is heading changes. Big ships can’t often read small boat names, and most small boats don’t have AIS ( Automatic Identification System). You can see that if everybody called us, we’d never get off the radio.” Meanwhile, he tries to determine who’s giving way, who is not, and which boats he needs to worry about. “I was northbound in this image,” he said, “but most of these small vessels are in the southbound lane. While pilots will often respond to radio calls from small boats who may have doubts about the safety of a crossing situation with a big ship, Knutsen showed me a radar image (below) of what it can be like for a ship trying to navigate safely. Pilot boat alongside container ship Hugo Schulte, inbound from New Zealand. “A lot of people may think, oh we’re sailing, we have the right of way,” said Knutsen, “but it’s not necessarily the case in the lanes.” If boaters are transiting shipping lanes they should know Rule 10, which basically says that a vessel less than 20 meters shall not impede a ship transiting in the lanes. When you do that and point your boat astern of our ship, we think, ‘okay, I know what you’re doing now thank you.’ That’s the easiest way to signal us.”īy rules, Knutsen means the International Collision Regulations, known as 72COLREGS. You can help by making, for example, a large and obvious course change early enough to avoid a dangerous situation. If you can make your actions significant, obvious, and early enough like the rules say, then that’s one less thing for us to worry about in making sure you’re safe. But we don’t always know where you’re going. Most people can see where we’re going we’re transiting in the lanes, and we’re heading to one of the major ports. “If in doubt about whether you’ve got a problem with crossing the path of an oncoming ship,” he said, “please pass astern of us. I asked, “What’s the main message that Puget Sound Pilots want the public to know?” I spent an hour in conversation with Severin Knutsen, a Puget Sound Pilot and son of Port Townsend shipwright Leif Knutsen and his wife Joan. flagged, roll-on/roll-off ship, bound for Port of Tacoma, off Port Townsend, passing sloop “Walden” outbound.
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