Looks like we’re in for some snow this evening. It will be the first snow of the season for me – not counting the barely perceptible flurry I saw through my office window yesterday afternoon.
This winter I find myself on the fence with respect to skiing or snowboarding. I would rather spend my free time on the Bay! I have a meeting at Tradewinds on the 12th to discuss my teaching schedule for the upcoming year. I will also begin the process of becoming a US Coast Guard certified captain by taking the required first-aid course. Pretty exciting, really. I know it sounds like dry stuff, but getting this license is the first step to really becoming a professional sailor. The test is grueling, and from what I understand its closed-book nature is completely unrealistic, especially considering the quantity of navigation lights I will have to memorize. On a boat, in the dark, I would have references available to help me identify what ship might be displaying the arrangement of lights I see in the distance. In the test, I’ll have to rely on what I have memorized to get me through.
It reminds me of my second season in Kodiak, Alaska. Driving the boat at night was a duty that often fell to us deckhands, as the skipper needed to get good rest at some time; while travelling, at night, was realistically his best opportunity. He would set up the chart plotter with a rhumb line which we were to keep the boat on. Using this, and the radar, we were able to safely navigate many constricted straights and passes without incident. I remember one night when we had just left port, and I was first on watch. Just outside town there is a narrow straight between Kodiak Island and a smaller Island to the north. Ouzinkie pass, I believe it was called. It had a small, rocky island smack in the middle of the straight, creating a sort of median.
I had never been shown chart 1, the standard legend for nautical charts, much less a light list or even had any instruction concerning lights outside of “red is the port running light and green is the starboard, and any boat approaching from starboard has the right of way and is showing you a red light” (simple enough, eh?). So I was completely unprepared for the light show I saw coming the other way in Ouzinkie pass that night. In the distance it looked like a Christmas display, with a series of white lights stacked up on top of each other, with yellows and reds and greens all seemingly intertwined. I was astounded and afraid. I also knew well enough to stay the hell away from it! I could barely make out the outline of the tugboat as it passed, a couple of hundred yards of our port side, and then I saw the barge it was towing! Even though I came across this spectacle, ignorant of the signs it was displaying, in one of the narrowest sections of navigable water in Kodiak, we passed without any trouble.
So, with this knowledge in mind, I anticipate the Coast Guard test having some difficult problems, as I will not be able to see the outlines of any ships in the questions. But I think I’ll be OK. The most dangerous times (the ignorant ones) are fading into the past, and the knowledge I will gain as a result of studying for this exam can only facilitate a safe journey into the future.
Q
