Challenging night boating skills
I fyou want to test your skill competency at boating at night, take a trip down the various canals at Mandurah.
The traffic on the water is like the causeway at 5 o'clock on a work day. Boats, launches of all sizes with a wide variety of skippers with some, and no knowledge of the "rules of the road" are as thick as.
A lot of the houses have really gone to great lengths to put up a lot of yule tide decorations and are very impressive. However if you are the skipper you are only going to snatch a quick glance at them as you will be very busy keeping a sharp look out for all the other boats doing the same thing in very confined waters.
Hats off to the local water police for doing a great job on the water with help to those who perhaps might not feel comfortable being on the water in close company with so many other boats that range from 3 metres to 20 metres.
It's well worth having a look at and being on the estuary with the kids who are all oohs and arrhs at the lights.
dxd351
Posts: 12
Date Joined: 23/09/13
Does anyone know if the
Does anyone know if the display of lights are still running or have they wound down. We missed it prior to xmas, last year was amazing.
D_d_001
Posts: 1522
Date Joined: 09/03/13
last year we were there over
last year we were there over new year and the lights were still going strong.
FWIW it was fantastic and what I saw of the skippers was very tame. had the kids on my boat and there was very little confusion with most doing the right thing......one steady and slow procession.
mind you we stayed in Mandurah canals for a week and the couple of times I took the kids out to see the lights it was reasonably early....just after dark. maybe the idiots were't out yet.
Well worth the trip for the kids !
linoc
Posts: 96
Date Joined: 21/11/15
Yep! if the winds up at
Yep! if the winds up at Mandrah there's also so some out at Yunderup canals/murray river, can put in at the ramp out there
epic restos and...
Posts: 226
Date Joined: 22/06/15
totally agree worse than the
totally agree worse than the freeway and absoulotly amazing how many totally incom penent unskilled skippers there are (and arragant) this is why i do not agree that you can get your RST in 30mins and is basically unfailable, Bring back the TL3 i say i done it at 14yld and was a very extinsive course that took quite a few days to sit and the practable was extremly testing
linoc
Posts: 96
Date Joined: 21/11/15
lol, where have I heard that
lol, where have I heard that before?
How's the back log going bugga?
Veitchy
Posts: 28
Date Joined: 12/05/13
Hi guys, down in Mandurah at
Hi guys, down in Mandurah at moment and did the lights with family on Monday night. I've never seen so many boats in a confined space at night. I've done a lot of sailing and it was worse than a start line, although I didn't see any collisions or incidents. Everyone seemed to be taking it slow and cautiously fortunately. I did see a couple of dodgy things though, one approx 7m plate Aly hard top (nice boat) with his red and green Nav lights around the wrong way. As it was a good boat I thought he may have even been playing a joke. I doubt his insurers would have seen the funny side. Other one was an 8' dinghy with three guys, a 3.3hp, practically no freeboard and no lights zipping in amongst the procession.
Lights are still going strong. Very impressive and definitely some serious effort being put in down there. I suspect they would be in no rush to pull down considering the effort involved.
linoc
Posts: 96
Date Joined: 21/11/15
Apart from a few who like on
Apart from a few who like on the road don't seem to know or care about a safe speed limit, or overloaded, I found the congestion and festive attitudes pretty good.
Rekon there may have been a few donks that didn't like the low revs
Subaquatic
Posts: 514
Date Joined: 23/04/11
All sounds like good
All sounds like good practice for those skippers who wanna do the Rotto swim!!
randall df223
Posts: 6454
Date Joined: 08/08/11
One of the best exercises to
One of the best exercises to improve your boat handling skills in tricky conditiins is to find a yacht marker or post thats not in use, and practice holding station with your bow as close to it as you can without touching it. As you improve introduce more challenging conditions, ie opposing wind / current. The lower reaches of the river is a good area to do this as you get a fair whack of current going throw there between tides.
Fish! HARD!
Giddyarp
Posts: 26
Date Joined: 20/02/15
We did the tour through the
We did the tour through the canals a few days before Christmas and the kids loved it. I had my hands reasonably full but did like what I saw :)
Everyone did seem to behave themselves reasonably well but I agree that some need to brush up a bit on the rules of the road and how to turn their nav lights on. Well done to some of the guys/gals that skippered some pretty large vessels in the canals surrounded by smaller boats.
My only gripe is that I didn't have any coins and couldn't pay to use the facilities at the marina. The Mary st ramp was a nightmare with many not understanding the concept of wait your turn.
All in all it was a great night and we will do it again at the end of this year should we still be over here. Might go a bit earlier though next time.
Dane Field '03 475 Freedom Sport powered by an '03 60HP efi Merc Towed behind THE 100 (UZJ100 Sahara with a lot of good gear) Located in the Rockingham region "A poor man always buys things twice"