Navigating Your Vessel for Search and Rescue

Marine navigation is not an inherent skill and requires practice. It is easy to think you can depend on marine electronics for navigation and collision avoidance, but these tools are useless unless you know how to use them. Regardless of your ability to use them, the presence of electronics does not relieve you or your responsibility to keep a lookout nor does the fact that you are on the water in a public safety capacity. So here are some thoughts on response to marine emergencies (whether visibility is good or poor) based upon my own school of hard knocks over many years of boating.

Vessel safety first

We are all buying boats for agencies with lights and sirens and it’s amazing what they are doing with LED’s these days. But something happens when we get a call on the water and we flip the emergency lights on. It is very easy to fall into the trap of over-driving your boat, which can lead to a very uncomfortable ride. Could you imagine the destruction you’d do long term to a 50,000-lb fire truck if you were to drive it off road at full speed? Similarly, take it easy on the water when you must deal with difficult seas; your crew will appreciate not having to be bounced out of their seats and not having to chase unsecured items bouncing all over your pilothouse. You can also increase the life of your hull. Believe it or not, there can be immense stresses on the hull and transom when one drives a boat hard. Trim your boat’s speed for wave/sea conditions as well as motor trim and/or trim tabs. If you are with an operator who insists on launching the boat off waves and porpoising the hull due to bad trim, this makes it nearly impossible to see your radar and chart and difficult to keep eyes alert for potential collisions.

Keep a lookout

Rule 7;§ 83.05 International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea- COLREGS
Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper look-out by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate in the prevailing circumstances and conditions so as to make a full appraisal of the situation and of the risk of collision.

Notice that the Inland and International rules don’t care about your level of experience, or the type of vessel you are driving. If you are driving a supertanker or public safety vessel, every vessel shall maintain a lookout. Now you don’t need a guy in a crow’s nest with a parrot to comply with this requirement, but some of our marine electronics can really help out in addition to scanning outside the wind-screen of course. 

Using radar is an obvious layer in the “lookout” solution bin. Software has become much easier and broadband systems allow for instant scanning without the annoying scanner warmup time of the past. Don’t worry about your radar having the ability to “see” 24 or 36 miles, be more concerned about getting good images of potential hazards in closer depending on your speed and area of operation. Rule 7 of the COLREGS even addresses radar:

(b) Proper use shall be made of radar equipment if fitted and operational, including long-range scanning to obtain early warning of risk of collision and radar plotting or equivalent systematic observation of detected objects.

What is interesting about this regulation is that it speaks to the radar being properly used. This responsibility is put on us as operators. If your agency has neglected either training staff in the use of chartplotters and radars, you may want to do some remedial training. If your radar scanner is shot or not interfacing with your electronics, call a good marine mechanic. Remember, you gain no special privilege to operate in poor visibility or to avoid collisions at sea by the fact that you are operating an emergency vessel. By the way, it’s ok if staff know when not to go out. It is possible that sea conditions, as well as night and fog, may quickly exceed one’s experience level. More training with other experienced operators can help here as well as utilizing and familiarizing with all marine electronics available, even in clear weather with flat seas.

I am a fan of dual screens, but everyone has their own preference. While underway, I like one screen displaying radar, and the other displaying chart. If you orient radar and chart the same direction and have them roughly at the same scale, you’ll be amazed at the stuff you can pick out in fog or inclement weather. As the boat operator, keep your eyes moving; scan outside near/far, then chart (where is my nearest buoy, etc.), then radar (am I seeing something not on the chart?). Also, don’t forget to keep an eye on your binnacle compass to ensure a consistent heading in zero visibility. It’s amazing how fast you can get turned around. In heavily congested waters you may need to back off on the throttles so that you don’t get sensory overload in poor visibility and overdrive the boat. Let someone else manage radios and other distractions. You need to manage the boat while navigating to a call—everything else is secondary.

A lot of chartplotter manufacturers offer the ability to overlay data such as radar onto your chart display. My only caution here is that it is possible for the radar overlay image to partially obstruct items, such as buoys, on your chart display. Large metallic items such as barges or sea-walls can throw off internal electronic compasses used by some overlay platforms, which in turn can cause the overlay to become skewed in relation to the chart display; thus my fondness for two displays. Did you know that when you whack an unlit nun buoy at 1 a.m., it kind of acts like one of those inflatable punching bag clowns you had as a kid…not that I’d know.

One recent development in the marine electronics front is AIS or maritime Automated Information Systems. These systems broadcast vessel information and specifics about vessels with AIS in the area such as their course, position, and speed, right on your chartplotter. This is wonderful information to have when in pea-soup fog and you don’t want to run into something big and steel, full of Costco containers. We have been installing AIS on the larger boats in our agency’s fleet, which can be viewed on the chartplotter in our command vehicle. AIS can be purchased as standalone boxes to wire into your NMEA network, or in marine radios, and chartplotters that network together. It is pretty inexpensive technology and you get a lot of bang for the buck since more and more boaters are getting AIS.

Do not underestimate the power of a good marine hailer—not to be confused with the siren on your boat. A good hailer system will allow you to use it not only as a PA system, but more importantly to listen; by hearing another vessel’s fog signal for example. The really cool part is you can also use them to automatically sound your own fog signal when underway (one prolonged blast while underway every two minutes), or if you happen to be at anchor in the fog (two prolonged blasts every two minutes). This is consistent with our overall goal of preventing collisions at sea by being at least heard if not seen, and required by the COLREGS for vessels in reduced visibility.

Arriving on scene

In the excitement of the moment, it is tempting to come in red-hot with your boat. There’s a couple of inherent problems though. First, you may be dragging a 3-foot wake into the scene that will not help the distressed boaters, or you for that matter. There may be people in the water or even loose lines that will foul your props or intakes. So cruise in easy, paying particular attention to your wake and the water between your boat and the distressed vessel. Above all else, take care of managing your boat before divers, underwater robotics, or sonar gear is deployed. You have just become a work platform transitioned from a “speedboat”, and you have to make sure the hook is set, or you are properly tied off and fended prior to any scene work you will be doing. Dragging anchor does no one any favors. In the case of a drowning, immediately set a waypoint for the point last scene or toss in a weighted buoy. At least then you will have a solid point of reference to work with.

One thing I find so amazing with today’s technologies is the ability to perform a water search at night, in fog, or even in snowy conditions and have full awareness of vessels in the area, where we are on the water, and what we’ve covered with sonar on the bottom. Although there’s always lots to learn with the ever-changing technology, it’s a great time to integrate and practice with navigation technologies aboard your public safety vessels.

DAVE PHILLIPS is an undersheriff for the St. Louis County, MN, Sheriff’s Office and has worked on the shores of Lake Superior for 28 years. He holds a 50-ton USCG Master’s License. He and his team specialize in underwater search and recovery utilizing several underwater sonar and robotics platforms. Phillips also works on the Crossmon Consulting team, which specializes in drowning search and recovery, training for sonar/rov’s and marine electronics for public safety. He can be reached at [email protected].