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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 |
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