USCG to REMOVE buoys!

I'll preface my comments with: I generally only boat in Galveston Bay and in the Gulf of America offshore of Galveston and Freeport.

I don't know about others but in the Bay, I seldom use my GPS for navigation since I know it so well but there are a few areas where I rely on bouys to keep in a channel. Keeping your eyes glued to the GPS, or other electronic device, is a recipe for disaster in my opinion. I do get it that large vessels are moving slower so have those electronic devices are most likely all that's needed but not having a visual aid/buoy is, again, a recipe for disaster. How do expect vessels to navigate in unfamiliar waters when one of those electronic devices fails, at a very critical time?
Sounds like the government bean counters need to re-evaluate the funding priorities.
 
I ve been using GPS since the early 90s… I ve never had one fail and I can’t count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I ve had brief signal loss or lost accuracy. And I spend over 500 ohours a year under way.

And nowadays, even if your plotter fails just take out your phone. It s really just as accurate.

There are many redundant unneeded ATON that could be eliminated. Plus in dense fog, they are invisible anyway :)
 
With the ever changing bottoms of Long Island south shore-Buoy placement is often dead wrong-
mostly use GPS breadcrumbs, even shared with others that have local knowledge updated each year and then sometimes after storms.

FWIW-I remember my first boat with Loran and it work great for what it was – GPS blew it away for me
 
abalmuth said:
With the ever changing bottoms of Long Island south shore-Buoy placement is often dead wrong-
mostly use GPS breadcrumbs, even shared with others that have local knowledge updated each year and then sometimes after storms.

FWIW-I remember my first boat with Loran and it work great for what it was – GPS blew it away for me
Click to expand...
Finding a small artificial reef in the Gulf during the Loran years used to make the admiral extremely seasick. The process was get the loran to say on target, throw out a marker bouy, spend quite a bit of time running circles around the marker bouy until you managed to spot the reef and throw out another bouy. Sometimes finding the original bouy to be in another zip code. Still it was better than the days when we used a compass heading from a known spot like the farewell bouy and then traveled a certain amount of time hoping to hit the spot. We spent far more time searching than fishing in those days.
 
Eh it's First District....I don't go up there lol.
I will say that I am surprised this is the avenue they decided to pursue as a cost cutting measure considering everywhere else they're already doing it. Maine is treacherous.....buddy of mine was Officer-in-Charge of an 87 footer up there. This happened on the Maine coast:

IMAG0962.jpgIMAG0964.jpg
 
In Maine rocks don’t grow overnight… they re well charted.
 
There are a variety of issues both pro and con with GPs reliance and buoys themselves. Buoys can snd have been moved by tides and currents. GPS is susceptible to spoofing. Often the military runs excercises that result in GPS spoofing and it is not unknown for spoofing in the vicinity of National security events, such as Presidential visits (those of you near Palm Beach beware.)8 It is vital that if you rely upon GPS that you check Notices for known GPS outages. WAAS enabled GPS is a little better in that it will let you know disagreement between WAAS and the GPS systems.

Currently the FAA has a program to decommission VHF navigation aids but even they acknowledge the concern of maliscous interruption of the GPS constellation. For this reason they have a plan for vhf navigation in the event of enemy action.

This is not unknown even now. Russia has been spoofing GPS as far south a Egypt in support of action in Ukraine. Iran has betmessing with GPS signals all over the Middle East.

Bottom line is be very aware of GPS integrity if you are going to rely upon it as sole source. That is true of any system of navigation including buoys.
 
bigblocksarefun said:
Eh it's First District....I don't go up there lol.
I will say that I am surprised this is the avenue they decided to pursue as a cost cutting measure considering everywhere else they're already doing it. Maine is treacherous.....buddy of mine was Officer-in-Charge of an 87 footer up there. This happened on the Maine coast:

View attachment 2968View attachment 2969
Click to expand...
Saw the dive videos of the Hammerhead in the early 2000’s after finding some rocks in Woods Hole pass, looked very similar.
 
November Charlie said:
Saw the dive videos of the Hammerhead in the early 2000’s after finding some rocks in Woods Hole pass, looked very similar.
Click to expand...
I bet. Unfortunately this was a case of something getting delegated down way too far. They had a calmer shortcut out to sea when it was rough out but the tide had to be at a certain level. The VERY junior person this task (navigation brief) ultimately fell to didn't know to check for certain things, like the fact that the area was experiencing record low tides....
Next comes the sickening sound of rending metal ending a career. Was only his second OIC job as a Senior Chief and after that he damn sure wasn't getting another command; because of that he wouldn't be able to sit for the review board and since that is a per-requisite for Master Chief, that as they say was that. Had to finish out his career there and lost the race to his brother. One year apart, both joined at the same time, each trying to hit milestones first.
I felt bad for him, but I felt a little more bad for what happened next. At that time the CG Yard had instituted an overhaul program on that class where a crew would show up with an 87 and get sent home with the one that just got overhauled. MORAY wasn't in that rotation yet. They ended up rearranging the schedule to have it towed down; at the same time the 210 (RELIANCE) that was out of Portsmouth NH was due to come down for her haul-out. Those poor bastards had to go up to Maine, put MORAY in tow, then tow her all the way down to Cape Henry and up to the Bay bridge before tugs took over. The 500 nm trip that should've just brought them down the coast to the C&D and down the Bay to the Yard in like a day & half at 15 kts or so ended up taking them almost 700 nm and the better part of a week. Not only that, MORAY's crew was aboard for that whole trip and wasn't exactly smooth weather that whole time.
 
bigblocksarefun said:
I bet. Unfortunately this was a case of something getting delegated down way too far. They had a calmer shortcut out to sea when it was rough out but the tide had to be at a certain level. The VERY junior person this task (navigation brief) ultimately fell to didn't know to check for certain things, like the fact that the area was experiencing record low tides....
Next comes the sickening sound of rending metal ending a career. Was only his second OIC job as a Senior Chief and after that he damn sure wasn't getting another command; because of that he wouldn't be able to sit for the review board and since that is a per-requisite for Master Chief, that as they say was that. Had to finish out his career there and lost the race to his brother. One year apart, both joined at the same time, each trying to hit milestones first.
I felt bad for him, but I felt a little more bad for what happened next. At that time the CG Yard had instituted an overhaul program on that class where a crew would show up with an 87 and get sent home with the one that just got overhauled. MORAY wasn't in that rotation yet. They ended up rearranging the schedule to have it towed down; at the same time the 210 (RELIANCE) that was out of Portsmouth NH was due to come down for her haul-out. Those poor bastards had to go up to Maine, put MORAY in tow, then tow her all the way down to Cape Henry and up to the Bay bridge before tugs took over. The 500 nm trip that should've just brought them down the coast to the C&D and down the Bay to the Yard in like a day & half at 15 kts or so ended up taking them almost 700 nm and the better part of a week. Not only that, MORAY's crew was aboard for that whole trip and wasn't exactly smooth weather that whole time.
Click to expand...
Remember hearing about that one. I think a friend had a friend on the boat or something, you know how lightning fast word spreads after a MISHAP. I had text messages waiting on my phone before I even moored up after a significant one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top