Lesson Learned - Not all Cardinal Marks Are Lit
First RORC race of the year, the De Guingand Bowl, out of the way over the weekend. A gentle, 100 mile, light airs race to Poole and back via Bembridge and St Catherines point.
As a crew and skipper we learned a couple of things.
Lesson One: Navionics isn’t always right.
Just because Navionics says its so doesn’t mean to say it is.
Seventh or eighth mark of the course, I lost track, was the South Cardinal off Boscombe Pier, Bournemouth. Our part of the fleet reached the mark in close company about midnight on a dark, starry, moonless night. The South Cardinal is off Bournemouth seafront; it marks Boscombe Pier and an artificial reef.
Navionics marks the Cardinal as being lit with the standard combination of white lights. The reality is that the mark is unlit.
So imagine the scene.
The race fleet reach the previous mark after crossing Poole bay from the East at the bottom of the main channel into Poole. The ebb tide is running strongly and the fleet bunch up as they tack north towards Bournemouth and the next mark.
A lot of tacking along the shore out of the tide… in the dark… I’ve only ever done that in the daylight before… dodging the tide and all the other boats with only the boats mast head lights to go by is a whole new level of fun.
An hour or so later we reach the area of the next turning mark closing in on the way-point location; which of course is set to the Latitude and Longitude of the Cardinal mark. There are maybe 5 boats sailing together in front of us on a close hauled port tack course. So in front we have the stern lights of the boats, to port we have the seafront lights. To starboard we have the inky blackness of the English channel, with stars and a lot of other masthead lights.
It all happens very quickly, no one can spot the Cardinal’s flashing lights, there are a lot of car headlights on the seafront to confuse us, a lot of educational reciting of how many times a South/East/West/North cardinal light flashes has already gone on. Then out of the darkness hurtles a yellow metal ball mark. To be honest I think we see it as it goes past rather and before it reaches us. We are doing six or seven knots at that point.
Cue more intent staring into the darkness.
The boats in front are about hundred metres ahead. Still no cardinal marker. Then it comes past us on the port side, no lights just a large lump of metal weighing a couple of tonnes that misses us by a couple of feet. Not even enough time to steer away from it…. just a “*** that was close reaction from everyone”.
Apparently one of the boats in front actually hit the mark and one of the crew heard the noise but nobody put two and two together until later.
We sail a hundred metres and twig to the fact that we passed it to port not starboard…. its supposed to be a starboard rounding … more four letter words. We turn the boat around and are very grateful for the fact that we are now on starboard tack and have rights over most of the other boat coming into the mark.
Round the mark on to the next turning point twenty something miles later … tired skipper turns in for a couple of hours.
Lesson Two - GPS is really quite accurate.
GPS can be really accurate. People do use it to guide cruise missiles to targets for a reason.
Never put your way point on a navigation beacon. You will find the mark but maybe not in the way you want.
The chart edit info has gone to Navionics this morning.
Next race is the RORC Myth of Malham over the bank holiday weekend which we are all looking forward to….. more lessons will doubtless be learned.