Jonathan Snodgrass wrote:
The Sea Me is a replacement for the original, traded in with the manufacturer, and now has both X and S band radars. Apparently the S band is used by ships once clear of coastal waters. Clearly it does depend on a watch being kept by shoips, but they do have alarms I think.
I was told the other day by a merchant navy officer that his priority is to watch the AIS and that the radar is now further down the list of priorities.
An AIS transponder is indeed a Good Thing for you to have. It will get you displayed on most ships' electronic chart, and will provide a transponder overlay on some ships' radars.
Not watching the radar so much, and relying on the AIS, is a big mistake and contrary to good watchkeeping practice. That kind of behaviour has caused many collisions, even among big ships. It's known as an "electronically-assisted collision".
Most large ships have two or three radars, two of which are in common use, with the third often being an old unit that "still works" but that no one uses. The two commonly-used radars are typically one S-band and one X-band. In coastal areas, both will be used. At sea, sometimes one of the two is turned off (or rarely, both) in an attempt to reduce the wear on the magnetron and save money from the company. This is especially true of third-world mentality ships, like the Greeks (it's also debatable whether it actually works, since temperature and humidity changes in magnetrons that are turned on and off might cause more wear than continuous duty).
Anyway, many captains will only leave the X-band radar turned on, because search-and-rescue transponders (SARTs) only respond to X-band, on X-band. This is also the case for many older, non-frequency-agile navigational radar transponders (RACONS).
Even offshore, the vast majority of officers (myself included) will prefer to have one or both radars operating, because it makes detection much easier, on a calm sea, in order to feel more comfortable doing some of the mountains of paperwork that are now standard on most ships.
I keep hearing these rumours, especially from cruisers, of ships underway with no one on the bridge. I have sailed with both first-world and cheap-labour crews (Canadians, Ukranians, Algerians, Greeks, Salvadorians) and I have never, ever seen this. During the daylight watches, I've seen officers on the bridge alone, but during the night, even on the slackest ships, I've nearly always seen two on watch (the officer with either an able-bodied seaman or a cadet). I suspect the cruisers imagine the bridges are unmanned (and it probably /is/ safer to assume so) because of ships' lack of reaction to them, or because they are difficult to raise on the VHF.
Ships don't react much to yachts for a variety of reasons:
First, it's true that some draconian third-world captains don't allow junior officers to make substantial course changes (or sometimes any course change at all) without calling the captain to the bridge. This might lead an inexperienced officer to accept a smaller closest point of approach (CPA distance) than normal, simply because he doesn't want to call the sleeping or movie-watching captain at 20 minutes to midnight.
Second, yachts often behave erratically, especially in coastal waters, causing officers to effectively ignore them until they fairly close. Many will only alter course for a yacht when it is less than 2 miles away, leading the yacht's skipper to alter course first, thinking the ship never saw him.
Third, many officers prefer to make small alterations of course resulting in a satisfactory passing distance (contrary to collision regulations), which may not be apparent to a yacht.
Fourth, when there's any substantial sea, white fibreglass yachts with white sails are difficult to see on radar through the sea clutter and /extremely/ difficult to see visually. That particular colour combination is best understood as a camouflage scheme, like dressing a mottled green-brown in the forest. Despite their best efforts, the ship's watch might never see a given yacht.
Fifth, many ships will be difficult to raise on VHF because a bridge is a noisy environment, and especially in coastal areas, the officer will be keeping watch on a number of VHF channels (and all their chatter) simultaneously. If a yacht isn't calling the ship specifically by name (which is hard to do, at a distance, if you don't have AIS), the ship might take some time before realizing that it's being called. This is also due to having to walk across a bridge bigger than many shoreside homes to get closer to that particular VHF's loudspeaker. Unless the ship is newer, with an airplane-like integrated bridge layout, the 3 or 4 VHF receivers are spread all around the bridge.
All of this now said, it's true that a motor vessel underway must give way to a sailing vessel underway (sailing), in most circumstances. However, the sailing vessel also has the obligation to manoeuver to avoid the ship when the situation becomes such that the sailing vessel's manoeuver is necessary to avoid collision. Thus, in cases where a yacht (with no one on watch) is run down by a ship, both are at fault.
Yachts also aren't helped by the practice of singlehanding. All vessels have an obligation to keep a continuous watch, which is patently impossible when singlehanding. Sailing singlehanded beyond the skipper's capacity to continuously stay awake is much like riding a motorcycle without a helmet and subsequently smashing one's head. It doesn't make anyone deserve a sad fate, but it does somewhat reduce my sympathy.
Jonathan: Especially since you intend to singlehand, getting AIS and a radar transponder is an extremely good idea and will definitely increase your visibility to ships. Don't let your batteries go flat, and good luck.