Kayak at night - Dangerous.

Last week I was fishing in the local creek in my little tinnie. It was early evening about 7pm and getting quite dark, I had packed up and was motoring downstream to the boat ramp about 1.5klm away. I was motoring along at a reasonable pace when I noticed something on the water about 3 meters away to my port side - A dark coloured kayak with no lighting and the kayaker looking a bit concerned. He was lucky that I had not been on a direct collision course as I would have probably run over him, he was dressed in dark coloured clothing and almost invisible in the poor light conditions.

I turned my tinnie around to make certain he was ok and all was well, I told him how hard it was to see the kayak in the dark and suggested he get some sort of lighting for his own safety. I left on good terms and he decided to go home after the close call. It certainly gave me a fright and I will now keep a better lookout at night for the odd kayak.

For your own safety, please use some sort of lighting if using your kayak at night, nasty accidents could occur if unseen by a large boat moving fast in the channel and turn a nice fishing outing into a tragedy.

Be safe
Pete

I would always have a puff of my cigarette so the glow would alert travelling boats of my presence. ;)

A bloke I know would have a bong.

With the ever increasing variety of LED lights available you wonder .... Why wouldn't he be wearing a headlamp or something? Even a key ring version that runs on a watch battery forever is better than nothing. I don't get it.


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I use a Tektite 4 led which is legally approved in NSW, its a bit expensive but simple design and takes common batteries. I've almost hit another kayaker using those clamp on lights from the boats store ,their pretty useless against any lights in the background.

It's amazing the amount of water craft out after dark with no nav lights. Quite often coming in from the wider reefs off the sunny coast you will be straining your eyes for morons fishing the close in reefs with no light or inadequate light against a bright coastline and then they frantically flash a torch at you when they think they are going to get run over.

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in nsw if you hit him you would be partly liable as well for not maintaining a safe speed to avoid a collision
as bs as it sounds if you ever do hit someone say nothing to waterways or police without a lawyer first

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stevej

in nsw if you hit him you would be partly liable as well for not maintaining a safe speed to avoid a collision
as bs as it sounds if you ever do hit someone say nothing to waterways or police without a lawyer first

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Nothing to do with NSW - that is standard international colregs. You are never entirely blame free in the event of a marine collision.