Keep Yourself and Your Crew Safe
Always Make Sure You Know What You Are Doing!
If you are a boating enthusiast or beginner, and want to cruise the island waters, you need to know how to boat safely around the coral reef.
The first thing you need to do is to keep your eyes open. Island waters are clearer than other bodies of water, so you need to watch out for reefs. Don’t depend entirely on your navigational charts, as these don’t show details of shoals that contain coral. The same goes for chart plotters and marine GPS; use them but don’t trust them 100%. Combine them with some good old eyeball navigation.
You need to have the maximum sunlight possible, so make sure you follow approximate compass courses through the coral. Ideally, you should be out boating when the sky is cloudless. This also means that you need to find anchoring points along the route before entering a coral patch to anchor the boat if the sky becomes cloudy.
Polarized glasses also come in handy for spotting reef, as they do in fishing. This is not a suggestion, but an absolute necessity. Do not try to navigate without these. Polarized glasses help you identify coral patches by making different colors visible. The color of the reef depends on the depth. So at the greatest depth, the color is dark blue, but at five feet or less, it is yellow/white. In between, the reef gives off various shades of green.
You also need to be at an angle that offers the greatest visibility. If you are on a sailboat, use ratlines on the mast steps or shrouds. Alternately, you can stand close to the bow pulpit to raise your eye level. If you are on a powerboat, you can use a tuna tower or a flying bridge.
Fatima M.
Freelance Blogger
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