Finding the mother ship

[ron ll]

Andrew's story in the Seagull thread reminded me of another. You Puget Sounders probably know about the Fourth of July (actually the Third) party every year in Liberty Bay. Last year we were anchored somewhere in the middle of about 300 or 400 boats and after the fireworks Kathy needed to take our guests back to their car on shore which was at Keyport, maybe 1-1/2 miles away. The Honda on the Zodiac was having problems (I know, shoulda had a Seagull) but no problem as Kathy likes to row at night and this is a calm closed bay on a nice summer night.

Coming back, she had trouble finding our boat. No moon but we had an anchor light. Unfortunately so did 3 or 400 other boats in the bay. No walkie talkie, no cel phone. She rowed and rowed and rowed... (no problem, Kathy likes rowing at night :) ) before finding the boat well after midnight.

We've since speculated on how to solve this problem. Not sure a walkie-talkie or cel phone helps. "Where are you? over." "Middle of 350 boats, where are you? over." "Middle of 350 boats, right next to a white one. over."

Portable GPS in the dinghy? High tech overkill. Trail of bread crumbs? Too many ducks. Horn? Too many people asleep on 3 or 400 other boats.

[Tom Hunter]

Flash some lights off and on, could be the mast head, or something else. Even better if you can do a series, for example masthead on, cabin off, masthead off, cabin on. Peoples eyes are naturally drawn to patterns, she would have found you pretty quickly.

[ron ll]

Thought about that, but the problem is that when your eyes are 4' off the water in the middle of 300 boats, chances are you can't see the lights on the home boat, flashing or not. Plus all lights flash as they pass behind other boats and masts when you are moving. :)

[willmarsh3]

I had that problem in St Michaels years ago when I used the water taxi to find my boat. I had better night vision then too.

I'm thinking taking a small GPS would be a good solution as it only costs about $110 for a basic unit and is pretty simple to operate. Just set the waypoint when you leave the boat. The unit should be able to put you back close enough to find it. Some cell phones have gps as well.

Another solution would be to take a bearing to your landing and to another land mark before leaving the boat. Make sure to pick something distinctive like a tower that will show up well at night. Return on a reciprocal bearing to the landing. When your second bearing matches up you should be close enough to see the boat clearly.

[Thorne]

Heck, its near Halloween -- pick up a couple of the glowing skull lights at the store and hoist 'em up the mast. They even come in glowing red and green -- PoRRRRRRRt and StaRRRRRRRboaRRRRRD...

;0 )

(or any other distinctive battery-powered light that doesn't mimic an official maritime signal)

[paladin]

Get a cheap FRS walkie talkie or keep a small marine VHF. If it does not have a touchtone pad purchase one ($25-30)..it's easy to install. Purchase a touchtone decoder used for amateur radio equipment...another 25-30 bucks or build one from a few parts. Plug it into the headphone jacks or permanently wire it to the speaker audio wires. The output is a relay...rig it to cause the masthead or other lights to flash when she tunes the radio to the ship channel and pushed the proper button on the pad...you can use any touch tone number....it can be rigged to toot a horn or anything a relay can do.
or...you can wire up a key click decoder with $10 in parts.....it will do the same thing by tuning to a vhf channel and pushing the transmit switch several times within 5 seconds....I rigged up one to turn on the runway lights with 3 clicks, off with 5 using the aircraft unicom channel.

[Lew Barrett]

Turn on the pilot house lights.:rolleyes::D Or do as Thorne suggested and get a string of pumpkin lampps. How complicated can we make this?

[Bruce Hooke]

If there are nearby visible landmarks on shore that you can count on then you could note down a couple of bearings before leaving the boat and take the hand bearing compass along. When you think you are getting close on the way back then take bearings on the same points. A little thought should allow you to figure out which way to go. Once you are within the immediate area then it might still help to have some obvious light signal such as a pumpkin light.

Of course the guaranteed solution is a hand-held GPS, but that costs money...

[Lew Barrett]

Getting around Liberty Bay just isn't all that hard in clear weather unless a person has absolutely no sense of direction at all. If all the lights are out in surrounding boats, leaving your PH house lights on for an hour while she works out and back should do it. You can also leave a cabin light on down below, and you'll stand out like a Christmas tree on a dark night. In the fog......gps in breadcrumb mode from the outset.

[Bob (oh, THAT Bob)]

The gold-plated NASA-complicated solution is Nobeltec's Tender Tracker Plus system; The transponder on the tender radios home and displays the tender position on the nav display on the mother ship using their Admiral software. Way, way more expensive than a handheld GPS, no more effective. It's better designed to keep track of multiple tenders on mega-yachts.

I like Paladin's suggestion about the key click decoder, pretty cool and sounds simpler than I would expect, but then I'm a mechanical guy. (So that's how it works at uncontrolled runways....I always wondered about that.)

[seanz]

A mirror ball?
A lava lamp?
A laser light show?
Then deploy the flares.
:)

Or you could use sparklers to write your boats name in the air.:D

[willmarsh3]

I think GPS is the only one of the solutions presented that would work if fog developed. But, that leads to the question of what did people do in the old days before GPS when there was fog?

[Hwyl]

GPS DAMHIKT

aside from being able to answer in abbreviations, the answer is transits and the like and generally noticing the subtle difference in boats around you. As for the fancy lights, been there, done that and had more conservative crew members who were already aboard turn them off "they're silly and they waste the battery".

[hansp77]

aside from the GPS or other tech solutions which sound good... but involved and a bit pricey,

I'd just get a few of the mini LED clip-on lights that you get for bike riding, for keychains,, etc. multiple colours, and flashing really fast and really bright.
You get em from chinese $2 shops.
maybe attach a string of them to one bit of cloth or rope so that they face out around 360 degrees, and then clip that onto a halyard- turn em on, pull em up, and you will see from a VERY long way away- plus the light difference should make it stand out from other lights.

[ron ll]

The problem with most of the light solutions is that they would work fine if you could see directly to the boat, but in Liberty Bay on that holiday you can seldom see past the boats nearest you, especially when in a dinghy.

This situation is pretty rare, and it certainly wasn't dangerous or even scary, altho I was starting to worry and of course had no means to go in search of her. But we were both laughing about it when she finally did arrive. Worst case if any danger did arise would probably be to simply knock on the hull of the nearest boat and ask for help.

Probably what should be done as others have mentioned, would be to take a bearing to a couple of objects on shore before leaving, then come back following the shore until a those marks show up then row away from them. Easy in hindsight :D .

[paladin]

I have always kept a pair of small handheld VHF or UHF radios on the boat, and when the kids wanted to go ashore I didn't worry so much if they took a radio with them. I came up with some small fixes.
The key click decoder was a little thing I dreamed up over 30 years ago, used a couple of bux in parts and worked well...another was a simple direction finder, that was the size of a business card and plugged into the antenna connector. All the radios had touch tone pads for use with amateur radio repeater autopatches. But......If for some reason I had to move the boat while they were ashore, especially around Manila Bay, it was an easy task to find me. I left the radio on all the time with the decoder plugged in. If the kids wanted to find me thay turned on the handheld, clicked a few times, turned on the transceiver for 3 minutes at a time and used the df to point to the boat.....the little $5 df was accurate plus-minus 1 foot at a mile....:D

[Tylerdurden]

I would think a High Powered strobe mounted to the masthead in combination w/ Paladins Runway light idea would do it. Don't have to see a strobe directly to get an idea where it is.

[paladin]

Mark...too many offshore weenies use strobes these days, you need something distinctive.....in Singapore we kept a string of christmas tree lights handy, pulled them up the flag halyard, replaced the lights with 12 volt bulbs.....Then we had Sam....Mark would be near the boat and whistle and Sam would start Barking.....but too many people complained after 8 p.m. (Sonsearey never could whistle worth a darn)
Dinghy alarm
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid225/p38f6f482613c5111e5dd43fed36ec50c/e7ae13a3.jpg
Sam critter would make a run for the companionway ladder when he heard oars (a helluva lot sooner than anyone else) and if you whistled and he recognized you he would bark until you arrived.

[Mad Scientist]

I'm with Thorne here - especially about ensuring that your lights don't 'mimic' something official.
The other option is ,of course, to let your Kathy row around until she finds your boart...

[Bruce Hooke]

I would think a High Powered strobe mounted to the masthead in combination w/ Paladins Runway light idea would do it. Don't have to see a strobe directly to get an idea where it is.

You need to be careful with a strobe because it could be taken as a distress signal.

[Bruce Hooke]

The problem with most of the light solutions is that they would work fine if you could see directly to the boat, but in Liberty Bay on that holiday you can seldom see past the boats nearest you, especially when in a dinghy.

Are the boats anchored far enough apart to allow them to swing to an anchor or do people pack in so much that there is only 20 or 30 feet between boats? If the latter then I agree that you are really down in a canyon trying to find your way to a place that you probably cannot see. If the former, then I'd bet that even in a dinghy you would be able to see some sort of distinctive light well up on the mast of your boat, maybe not all the time, but often enough to solve the problem.

[Bruce Hooke]

I think GPS is the only one of the solutions presented that would work if fog developed. But, that leads to the question of what did people do in the old days before GPS when there was fog?

One method was to have the mother ship regularly ring a bell. Out at sea when small boats were away from the mother ship fishing and fog rolled in, I think this was the usual method, but I could easily be wrong. Of course these days ringing a bell late in the evening in a crowded anchorage, while it might actually be required according to the regulations if it was a foggy night, would not go over well with the neighbors!

Also, folks who spent their life in boats got very good at picking out small signs of where the were and where they were going.

It should also not be forgotten that sometimes I'm sure they got stuck, lost or ended up rowing around for a long time, just as happened in this case. The only advantage they had is that they would probably not have been as bothered by spending a night sleeping in an open boat as we would be now!

[J. Dillon]

I'd take a compass bearing from the boat to the shore and row the reciprocal on the way back . Just a hand held hikers compass would do. Of course allowance for any current would have to be allowed for. It isn't the perfect answer and maneuvering around a crowded anchorage would have to be figured but it's better then just rowing blindly out.

JD

[ron ll]

Bruce: Liberty Bay is mostly 8 - 10 ft deep at low tide so folks don't have a lot of scope out, plus there are a lot of large rafts.

Had it been me, (next time I bet it will be :D ) I think I would recognize a lot more of the boats that are anchored near us. Not sure Kathy distinguishes between a Cal and an Erickson, let alone all the white plastic wedding cakes and Reboks afloat these days. But she's generally a good navigator with a good sense of direction. I might find out it isn't as easy as I think.

[Bruce Hooke]

I'd take a compass bearing from the boat to the shore and row the reciprocal on the way back . Just a hand held hikers compass would do. Of course allowance for any current would have to be allowed for. It isn't the perfect answer and maneuvering around a crowded anchorage would have to be figured but it's better then just rowing blindly out.

JD

I thought about that too, but in a crowded anchorage it might be debatable how much good a compass course would be given all the weaving and turning involved...

[Hughman]

Tug boats have used light patterns forever. They must work sometimes.. Put two battery powered red (or whetever) lights on a pig stick and hoist away. Anyone returning to the boat should be able to see the signal from a sufficient distance to home in on.

I'm thinking electronics on a dinghy might be a PIA, although Chucks RDF is kinda neat! More useful in a fog, I think.

[Tylerdurden]

Ok, Your right about the strobe. My only other suggestion is a direction finding setup. A hand held above 440 mhz with a small yagi and an attenuation box. You could home in on a beacon signal.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I can spot my anchor light and pick it out. It's kerosene, big ship size.

The other vessels that carry one tend to be a lot bigger so they carry it higher.

[paladin]

Mark...at 440 all you need for antennas and a df is a pair of rubber duckies on the handheld and a business card size adapter.

[Tylerdurden]

Mark...at 440 all you need for antennas and a df is a pair of rubber duckies on the handheld and a business card size adapter.

Thats what I was thinkin' . I haven't fox hunted in years but I am wondering if there is gear of the shelf that could be adapted into something simple and user friendly. It is a bit of and art, but maybe something on Doppler shift like lojack but hand held and for short distance?

[Tylerdurden]

PS , I was thinking above 440 maybe 1.2 to cut down on ghosting.
Not sure what band would be best but I figure high is good.

[George.]

Our anchor light is a 9 watt fluorescent bulb. No one else seems to use one (for one thing, it and its brass-and-glass fixture are the size of a large mayonnaise jar - in fact I am pretty sure the fixture used to be one. Only looks right on a schooner :D). You can tell it apart from all others from quite a distance.

Other than that, I believe careful observations of Jupiter's moons can help you establish your position. On a dinghy in a calm anchorage, you should be able to do it with binoculars and a slide rule - no need for GPS.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Flashlight & Mother Ship

Why do I keep thinking about Parlament and George Clinton ;)

http://i.realone.com/assets/rn/img/4/7/8/4/12004874-12004876-large.jpg

Ha da da dee da hada hada da da
(Dance, Nose! You know you on my funk street??)
Oh, funk me!
Ha da da dee da hada hada da da (get on down,
Nose! I like it! Dance,
then!)

Flash light
Flash light (oh ho ho!)
Spot light
Neon light (neon light)
Street light (street light)

Oh ho, ha ha!

Everybody's got a little light under the sun

Shinin' on the funk

[Dick Wynne]

I can spot my anchor light and pick it out. It's kerosene, big ship size.

It's actually a white dwarf star :)

[J. Dillon]

I still think taking a compass bearing to the shore and noting the time it takes to row there , then rowing the reciprocal later when returning will work. One can mentally note the change in direction when weaving your way back and row a little the other way around the next obstruction and the time it takes will give near enough to find the mother ship. :D

JD