it was on the boat when I got it
You were very unlucky there, we don’t have a spring tide until Thursday….
Unconvinced that these would have helped you remember to put down an anchor in the situations in the OP. Were they Mayday situations?
So not one for going aground? Or a pan pan (or not quite pan pan) like the OP?
The frequency of serious harm (death) to skippers who would be unable to pass the sort of test that is likely is very small. The frequency that those people harm others even less. Driving tests show that even with a testing regime you don’t avoid accidents. In fact, whilst it would be initially counter intuitive I suspect that any realistic test for say helming a rib would actually make matters worse - whilst some people who get no training today would get the bare minimum to pass the test, others who currently do the defacto minimum of PB2 would then do less. Meanwhile without any realistic prospect of getting caught many would continue to flout the rules whilst perfectly competent owners are funding some theoretical enforcement regime.
The large number of radio checks on Solent CG CH16 just proves that people don't think before they key the mic.
Didn't hear that one, what time did the entrance close?
My sympathies. That happens to us once a fortnight if we’ve sailed east and are returning on the ebb tide. It gets quite exciting if it’s windy too. When the centreboard trips, it’s like driving a shopping trolley.
Quite correctly so, nothing urgent about running aground so technically they’re informing the coastguard. We didn’t use PanPan when a rope wrapped our prop in the Irish Sea either but I did call the CG to advise them we’d be sailing into Kinsale with no engine and to discuss the plan. In the end the RNLI helped us onto a mooring but that was four hours later so certainly not urgent
I completely disagree. There’s very little that could be done given they’d need to wait for the tide and whether they consider it urgent is their decision. I certainly wouldn’t. It’s unlikely I’d even be requesting help via the coastguard in that situation, more likely seastart in the Solent.
Did they have a problem getting the help they needed? I agree I would probably have made PanPan call in those situations (but then I also hope I’d remember to put anchor our reducing the urgency of help!). In busy radio traffic not using the right pro word might mean your message is missed.
Did the CG upgrade the call? It’s not unusual for me to hear a call to CG for engine failure be upgrade to PanPan - because 1. It gets other vessels attention, 2. It makes it less likely there is other not urgent chatter.
Whereas I would disagree. If the skipper thinks it’s a mayday or PanPan then s/he should not feel under any pressure from the judgement of the armchair listener or coastguard watch officer to be reticent about declaring such. It can be downgraded later. If there is an issue (and certainly I’ve not been aware of one) it’s that either almost always results in a lifeboat being launched rather than the many vessels who could have assisted doing so.
Clearly you are the expert on this whole subject, Mr RunAgroundHard. Have you put this into practice frequently