Ken Harrap of Surrey, BC, CAN asks:

In your report of 16 January you mentioned running into a fleet of 50 boats half of which did not carry lights. Do you carry night vision binoculars and if so what make and model?

Dave Harlow responds:

There actually were much more than 50 throughout the night, but they were spread over about 30 miles of running down the strait. We would come upon groups of a 3, 4 or 5 then a group of a dozen, then 20 or more. Some lights and some just blips every other sweep of the radar. Some of the lights they did have appeared to be lantern lights. In amongst the fleet were 3 or 4 processing ships that the small boats would gather around. It was a problem at first and then once we figured them out a little it was kind of fun. I would pace back and forth in the pilothouse shouting out where to look and Brad would yell back if he could pick them out or not. A couple times we just had to go to idle and drift through as we did not know what type of boat they were or if they could get out of the way (they may have had lines or nets out). I am still not really sure what they were or what they were fishing for , but I do know I will never forget it...or the coffee.

We do have a Night Storm / Night Vision monocular on board. I have not really messed with it much, so I can't really give a fair review of it. I guess I should get it out and see what it can do.

One small note. I did not wake Ray up for his watch during this event and felt bad about not having him see this, but I wanted to keep one guy fresh in reserve. This was to be Ray. Ray had to pick up all the morning watches while we slept. He also cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner. Thanks Ray.

Dave

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