Proper Nav lights as set out in Col Regs are a neither here nor there for "Four Sisters" and, in fact, for any small boat.
If the pilot of a LLPG carrier coming up Milford Haven with the flood tide actually saw the little twinkle we could manage there isn't a lot he could do about it.
Flood lights on the sails, a white flare, AIS transmitter, even firing a bazooka at the bridge, wouldn't make any difference......... He can't turn, stop or even slow down even if he wanted to - which he don't! A ship like that, aground, is a major story on the evening news.
If I'm stupid/unlucky enough to be there in the first place (ignoring all the warnings, Harbour Master's chase boats and the racket on Ch16 ) I'm going to cop it!
No, the real danger to a boat like mine doesn't come from professional mariners. It is other small boats, more specifically, high speed motor boats, that scare me witless. At anything between ten and thirty knots on a coastal run these guys are not expecting to find a small, slow sailing boat in their path.
("Whoops! Where did that little b***er come from? Nearly hit it! Shouldn't be allowed out here with proper boats!")
In my experience, they never slow down, or deviate from their course by more than a fraction and have no idea of the problems their wash can cause a small boat.
Standard Nav lights are good to have. They convey a great deal of information - if they can be seen - but too often they are swamped by shore lights or even lost in the moon's reflection. The MCA should recognise that small boat sailors are the cyclists of the marine environment and lift the ban on flashing masthead lights. Riding a cycle in traffic on a wet winters night with a normal lighting set is suicidal. High intensity flashing LEDs give you a fighting chance of being seen by approaching motorists, half dazzled by oncoming traffic (why do people insist on using fog lights all the time!) and all convinced that a bike is like a bollard and can be shaved as close as you like! The latest LED cycle lights are incredibly bright and power efficient - if expensive - and I would rather have something like that at my mast head, flashing its head off, than some feeble MCA approved glim. In Greece this summer I noticed that many new flotilla boats already have flashing anchor lights. Who can blame them, but wouldn't it make sense to allocate rapid flashing masthead lights specifically for the use of small, slow vessels which, being unable to take avoiding action themselves, NEED to be seen by other mariners for what they are as soon as possible?
