| According to a letter to the editor of NAVIGATOR magazine, various court
rulings with respect to the Rules of the Road and radar indicate that:
"The bottom line seems to be: 1. If you have radar, and conditions
warrant it, you must use your radar. 2. If you are using radar, you must
know how to use it. 3. Failure to do 1 & 2 puts the onus for any accident
on you. You have to prove that your negligence didn't contribute to the
accident. Pretty heavy stuff. ... the recreational boating community
enjoys no particular immunity from adhering to the Rules of the Road,
and cannot expect to be immune from the rules or precedents ..."
Hmmmm. For those of us who sail with a small crew (two) on overnight
passages this is a potential problem. If the person on watch is looking
at the radar, he/she can't be keeping the required visual watch on deck.
Plus, for a sailboat with limited battery capacity, running a radar
continuously isn't possible. Sure, you may not damage what you hit, but
then your insurance company may not want to pay your claim either. Isn't
sailing fun? We don't have radar, by the way. Comments from anyone who
does?
Alan
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| My understanding of the Whistler is as follows: It rests on the user's chest,
suspended from a strap that goes around your neck. I don't know if you trail a
power cord or if it's battery powered. I would expect the latter. The unusual
thing about it is that you don't look at it but listen to it through a headset.
So if you're looking for a buoy, I guess you'd just turn until you picked up
what you're supposed to hear (increase/decrease in tone?) and then head for it.
If it's not too uncomfortable it might not be a bad idea for one person in fog
or at night. Relative sizes of the user and the whistler would be a big factor
in that equation though. You might want to check to see if you have to keep
clear of the standing rigging to avoid interference when using it. I haven't
seen ads for them in a while and assumed that the idea had died a quiet death.
My guess is that it was developed from the small radars the Army developed
and used in Nam. I never saw one but we did hear about them.
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