In article ,
KingOfTheApes wrote:
On Aug 22, 3:58 pm, "Lee Bell" wrote:
do yourself a favor and carry a hand held uhf radio or something and
if you see people, motorboat or not, acting like asses call the police/
coast guard."

Why not have a VHF? You can listen in to the VTC, and be told about the
big boats arriving in good time. I have a lot of use for that when
sailing inside VTC zones.

Some of them are real nice, real captains. Once one in Key Largo
helped us recover a sunken kayak.

It's like there's decent people driving SUVs, just that many of them
are reckless and they have made the wrong vehicle choice.


Here are a couple of clues. Power boaters have been picked on, harassed,
limited, and taxed almost out of their activities. It takes hours for them
to get where their fishing, diving, or other activities take place because
they have to travel at idle speed to keep manatees never seen in the area,
safe just in case they every happen to be there. They pay substantially
more for the fuel that the use simply because they use it on the water.
They bought their very expensive boats either because that's what they
enjoy, because that's what it takes to do what they bought a boat for, or
because they don't have the time to use slower, more economical vessels. No
matter what the reason, they have a right and a right to expect to be able
to use them to their maximum potential when and where the law allows.

The law abiding skippers sometimes have a pretty hard time with all the
other craft. Just listen to the commercial fishing skippers.

Sometimes that law doesn't exist or is not enforced and they just
follow the Law of the Jungle. If you talk about the channels their
speeds are not terribly willd, but still you are a sitting duck.

In certain spots of the intracostal and the beach, though, they just
fly over the water with their cigarette boats. It's common sight there
that they just fly by past the buoys, a few hundred feet from the
beach. If you go there to relax, their roaring motors will remind you
there's no place to hide. Well, try ear plugs perhaps.

C'mon, there's no control to this? Can't we have them stay at least 1
mile from shore?

Zoning?

You guys, and I, for that matter, have chosen a slower, more sedate and less
expensive mode of transportation for very different reasons. We don't us
kayaks to do the things others do in power, or sail boats. We can get closer
to nature, into places that power boats can and should not go, and generally
relax in ways unique to us. Why not do that in places best suited to what
we enjoy? Why encroach on the few places left that power boaters can use
their transportation the way the want and bitch about them doing it?

I've said the weekends belong to the predators. I even grant them the
daylight because I don't want to see their garbage. But going past the
buoys at the beach is reasonable, since staying within them would make
me a danger to the swimmers, and I don't want to become the predator.

With sailboats, we can escape to the ocean. Very few bubbas and incompetent
motorboat skippers there.

One more thing to keep in mind. It costs you nothing to wait a minute for a
power boat to pass. It probably costs a boat 25 feet or more in length, and
certainly the high speed monohulls you guys were complaining about, anywhere
from $10 to $20 extra to slow down and return to a plane. Perhaps that will
give you at least a little understanding of why they are so reluctant to do
so.

The thing with a motorboat is that you don't know if stopping puts you
at lesser or greater danger. You just have to predictable, and
hopefully they'll steer around you.

A word from some commercial captains I know.

Pleasure boaters are normally not aware of the traffic control and zone
separation in place; and even some quite experiencd amateur skippers are
clueless about how a large, commercial vessel stops. Hint: You don't want
to be in front of them.

They try to manouver as well as they can; but they really need the zone
space they are given in and out of ports. If you cross the separation zones
please do so at a fixed course and speed at as sharp an angle to the lanes
as you can. The large ships have automatic anti-collision trackers that
are _extremely_ useful in such waters, but they tend to give lots of
false alarms on small craft that zigzag in and out of lanes.

I just cheched the Miami area on commercial charts. It is chock full
of separation sones and report requirements almost halfway to Bahamas.
If you are unaware of these zones you will make a lot of commercial ships
hate you intensely when you are there, even in a Kayak. Especially
in a kayak.

You want to cross the channel, no problem. Find someplace where speed is
limited and go for it. God knows such places are all over the Intracoastal
You want to share areas where boats go faster, great, do it out of the
channels, in shallower water where your vessel is designed to go and power
boats aren't.

There's no safe intersections in those channels, much less a signal
light.

Nope. But when you cross, do so in a way predictable to the large vessels.

They also need 5-7 knots of speed to be able to manouver properly. With
less than 3 knots they are dead in the water and need thrusters and/or
tugs to operate. You really DON'T want them to have to press the brake for
you.

You just go for it and pray to come out alive.

You want consideration, so do the power boaters. You want consideration
from them, try giving it to them.

I do. The problem is NOT them actually. But the whole set up where we
--kayakers and canoeists-- are exposed to uncessary dangers, and where
they can speed, drink, get high, be reckless, and get away with it.

A few inquests has done away with that here. Suddenly the promising
salarymen were cons with drug&alcohol and violence crimes on their
records. Not what you would like on your CV.

Several of these inquests had other, experienced boaters who kept
their calm as witnesses.

Now, before you guys get all excited and tell everybody about the
occasionally jerk, ask yourself this. For every time a power boater
inconvenienced you, how many times do you suppose the power boater was
inconvenienced by you.

Lee

Some steering from them to avoid you is NOT an inconvenience. The
ocean is full of different species, and we all must get along, or
declare that the only law out there is the Law of the Jungle.

Hey, people who got "money to burn" can try sailing, that is more
rewarding and totally environmentally friendly. Motorboats which are
needed for fishing are OK too since they serve a purpose. And then you
can always choose the smaller motorboats out there.

Money to burn, indeed. I could buy a complete set of diving gear
for what a new Genua costs. And I have a 22 year old 36' boat.

-- mrr