Fun With Fog

SHIP'S LOG:

We have been promised, by the boys and girls at NOAA, 24 hours of rain free weather. It is a question of whether or not to believe 'em. I got hit with a short downpour last night. That,. along with a temperature shift, produced a real pea-souper this morning. I woke up the the honking of for horns both from buoys as well as boats. The fog does strange things to sound. It make sit difficult to gauge exactly where the sound is coming from. At times it muffles it and at others it funnels it, making even a stationary fog signal seem to grow louder and then softer even though it is not moving at all. This phenomenon can really raise havoc when the source of the fog signal IS moving such as when it is on a boat. There is a set time dictating how often you must sound your fog signal and for how long a duration. I must admit that it slips my mind just now. What can make it a bit confusing is that a sailboat under sail and a powerboat underway have different fog signals. In addition, boats at anchor also have fog signals that they must sound if they are anchored outside of a designated anchorage. Submarines have a fog signal which is silence! In the official Book of Signals,the sound signals used by submarines lists "_______" as the appropriate signal that is to be used by submarines transiting in the fog! If you are in a fog and don't hear anything, a submarine could be headed your way!

You can use just about anything to make "sounds" for a fog signal. Horns are the most obvious and the most frequently used, but you can also use bells, whistles, and goodness knows what else, including screaming, to warn off whatever and whoever may be bearing down on you through the fog. Of course most large vessels also depend on radar when navigating in the fog. This allows them "to see" whatever is in their way. Three things are necessary for it to be effective: 1.) it has to be switched on and be operating; 2.) someone has to be looking at the screen; 3.) the person looking at the screen has to understand what is being displayed on the screen. One only has to remember that the Andrea Doria sinking involved two ships in a fog with working radar. The local ferries around here don't want a similar incident on their records so even with the radars working, they blast away with their fog signals, not just at the scheduled times, but constantly. Being far out in the mooring field near to the riv er channel they traverse, the sound is enough to wake the dead and when two ferries are passing in opposite directions, the blasting increases and I wouldn't be surprised if it did wake the dead.

Well, it hasn't rained a drop so far, then again, there is no wind either. Hopefully this will change later in the day, the wind I mean not the rain.