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Nov 9, 2007 - Visibility
by Beth & Al Liggett

Sunflower is yellow. Bright yellow. She has always been yellow, even in the dreaming and design phase oh, so many years ago. (I cannot believe that was over 30 years ago!) People ask us, "Why yellow?" Well, we didn't want just another white boat. Blues were too much like the sea, reds will fade really bad, I'm not a green person, or black either, and besides, it would be too hot in the tropics. So what's left? Purple? - I think not! Orange? - another high visibility color, but not for us.

Actually, we didn't think about the visibility factor of yellow when planning "the next boat". Well, maybe just a little. But it's there, isn't it? Although I'm not so sure how much the color adds to the safety factor, it certainly is a big plus in the recognition factor - easy to spot among the many white boats. Countless numbers of times people have come up to us saying, "We knew you were here; we saw your yellow boat in the anchorage!"

We are always having reunions with those who recognize our yellow boat - even in the oddest of contexts. One of the most astounding reunions happened in Oriental, North Carolina, in 1983. We were cruising the ICW and pulled in to Oriental for three hours just to have lunch and pick up our mail - specifically a roll of charts for the rest of the trip north. As we were hoisting the dinghy back aboard a voice hailed us from the shore: "Ahoy Sunflower! Remember us?"

Al said, "Who's that?"

"I don't know, but they look familiar," I said. "We'd better go see." Turned out to be Ken and Florence, whom we had met in Manila in 1976! They now lived in Oriental and invited us into their creek where we met a whole bunch of other boating people - both ex-cruisers and locals. What fun a yellow boat is!

We have a radar reflector hanging in the rigging. We hope it gives us visibility with ships, but one is never sure about that. We have had various reports from ships we've contacted regarding our reflective signal, from outstanding to "if I didn't know you were there you'd just look like another wave."

We have a masthead light which we always run at night when underway at sea. We also have the standard running lights and use them mostly for visibility at night on coastal passages. We do not have a strobe and have never thought of using one. (Fishing boats in these parts have strobes.) We also have a good pair of spreader lights that flood the sails and deck to good advantage. We have one of those mega candlepower spotlights that we use to see other things like anchored boats or buoys, not particularly for others to see us, although that might help.

The best visibility we have for ships is our own eyes. We keep a watch, and we see things. And - day or night - if we see something we don't understand we call the other person to help. Another pair of eyes often unravels the mystery.

One very dark but clear night we were sailing in the Irish Sea. The wind was dead astern at about 30-35K and we were running wing and wing, well reefed and well strapped down. We had the VHF on Channel 16 to listen to any ship traffic, but generally they were over in their shipping lanes and well out of our way. Ahead of me red lights began to appear on the horizon. First a few, then a lot more. They weren't flashing; they were moving about in an unsettled way. What - a tow? I couldn't see any tugboat lights. The bobbing red lights were getting closer. I called Al. He couldn't sort it out either.

We were rapidly getting closer to those red lights. We were preparing to jibe and bear away when I saw this feeble glow near one of the red lights. Binoculars finally showed that what we were seeing were sailboats, and one had shown a flashlight onto the mainsail. They were all on a port tack, and bashing and crashing to weather! Only then did we remember a conversation between two ships regarding an overnight yacht race! After that we never relied on a flashlight shown on the sails to call attention to our presence. Use the spreader lights instead.

An important visibility consideration is finding your boat at night in an anchorage, especially if it's very dark or very crowded - or both! Our favorite anchor light had a photo cell (mounted inside the boat near a port light) that would turn on at dark. This light was supposed to be flashing, but after a lot of electronic tweaking, turned out to be more of an "occulting" type of light. That did set it apart from all the others around us. Unfortunately, this light has bit the dust and is no more. We now have an anchor light mounted high on our stern "tower of power". It's fine, if you remember to turn it on before you leave the boat. We also have a solar powered garden light which just happens to fit at the top of our wind vane bracket. It is not very bright, but the combination of the one bright light and the lower dullish light set us apart from others.

We have a broad patch of silver reflective tape on our mast about half way between the spreaders and the top. A good flashlight shone in an arc around a forest of masts usually picks this up and we can home in on "home". We carry a flashlight in a cuddy locker in the nose of our dinghy (also a spare spark plug and tools for the outboard in a water tight container, plus 2 bottles of water). The dinghy itself has reflective tape on both sides of the bow and around both corners of the stern. This make for instant visibility when it's bouncing around astern of us. And makes it easier to spot us when we are underway in the dinghy in anchorages where there is heavy dinghy traffic at night.