Use of Tunnel Lights

[Wanderer Vagabond]

You are entitled to your opinion, but many experienced boaters I know are happy to pass tunnels without lights. I regularly turn off my headlight when there is sufficient light from the approaching portal. There appears to be a reliance on bye laws and health and safety recommendations that were absent when I started boating...one of my first steering experiences was to take a Josher butty, then unconverted, through Netherton Tunnel ( OK, it's totally straight ) being towed on a longish line behind a tug. I managed, without a headlight, not to kiss the sides...

 

Dave

I don't quite see what you are trying to prove by travelling through the tunnel without a light. So when someone enters the tunnel and rams you head on because they couldn't see you approaching the exit portal I don't think your insurers will be laughing .It has nothing to do with 'health and safety' but everything to do with commonsense

[dave moore]

I'm not trying to prove anything, merely stating things as I find them. As a matter of fact, I do use a light in longer tunnels, often turning it off when close to the exit. I consider a head on collision extremely unlikely in any event, an oncoming boat would be aware of me from their light and move over to pass. Decent boats are robustly constructed and were a most improbable " sideswipe " occur I can't envisage much more than loss of blacking. Even less involving insurers.

 

I suppose this is coming from a self confessed old fart who remembers the whole waterway scene as far more robust in earlier days. There seems to be a lot of angst around these days...or is it just me???

 

Dave

[matty40s]

No, its not just you Dave, if pillock doing 4mph with blinding LED searchlight cant hear another engine or see another boat until he hits it, he is as culpable as the guy with no front light.

[Keeping Up]

Turning the light off shortly before the exit is about the worst thing you could do. In mid-tunnel an oncoming boat probably WILL see you from their own light (unless they have turned theirs off too) but as you approach the exit your boat will be hidden in the blackness of the tunnel. It will be completely invisible to the steerer of a boat that is just entering the tunnel, who may still be out in the daylight at the moment of impact.

[matty40s]

its also the point where they lose vision unless they have mastered the art of the one eye closed before entering a tunnel technique....

[Jess--]

even with tunnel lights there can be no excuse for the idiot that goes down the middle of a tunnel, hits another boat (that is already running with less than an inch clearance from the wall) and then complains that "they don't make these tunnels wide enough"

 

That one cost me quite a bit of blacking, some paintwork from the cabin and a lump of the wooden rail on the stern, annoyingly the boat had no visible name (grey primer)

[Wanderer Vagabond]

No, its not just you Dave, if pillock doing 4mph with blinding LED searchlight cant hear another engine or see another boat until he hits it, he is as culpable as the guy with no front light.

 

 

its also the point where they lose vision unless they have mastered the art of the one eye closed before entering a tunnel technique....

Not sure what point you are making since no-one seems to have come up with this "... pillock doing 4mph with blinding LED searchlight....". I would also suggest that standing on top of my own throbbing diesel I am unlikely to hear any boat that is inside of the tunnel whilst I am outside so if someone is approaching the exit from inside without any forward facing lights they deserve to be hit by a boat entering the tunnel. The one eye trick only works once you are actually in the tunnel, whilst you are outside in bright sunshine trying to see into the tunnel portal the only real chance you will have of seeing anything is if they have a light showing. There are a number of tunnels without a straight line approach (Gorsty being one of them from the Hawne basin end) where you cannot see very much into the tunnel at all until you are virtually in it yourself. I mention Gorsty because at that one I had pretty much lined up to enter the tunnel before I was able to see the tunnel light of a boat just about to exit the portal. If he had not been showing a light a head on collision would have been inevitable, as it was I was only just able to stop without collision, and that was entering the tunnel on tick-over. On that occasion no-one came to any harm other than the expected crap around the prop as I reversed back out

Edited February 11, 2016 by Wanderer Vagabond

[Iain_S]

This thread reminds me of an incident at Foulridge tunnel a few years ago, on the Leeds and Liverpool.

 

The tunnel is controlled by traffic lights, with, if I remember right, 15 minutes green each hour, and we arrived about 10 minutes before they were expected to go green for us. I switched off the engine to wait. While waiting, I could hear an engine, but couldn't see anything in the tunnel. Traffic lights went green. I could still hear an engine running somewhere, but it didn't seem to get any louder. I wasn't sure if there was someone coming through; it might not have been a boat engine, after all.

I waited until the lights were almost due to go red again, then started off. As I did so, a small narrowboat emerged from the tunnel, with a plastic on a fairly short tow behind him,. No light, and it wasn't visible until it had started emerging from the tunnel.If I had been 10 minutes later arriving, my engine wouldn't have been switched off, so I wouldn't have seen him or heard him. My tunnel light was adjusted high, so that it didn't illuminate the water, only the roof, so I woudn't have seen him unless silhouetted against the far portal. As it was, the traffic light went red as I entered the tunnel, so I think the other boats had entered on red, as they weren't going particularly slowly. (If they had gone in on green, it had taken at least three quarters of an hour for them to get through)

 

If I hadn't turned off my engne while waiting, I'd probably have hit the plastic broadside,

 

 

edited four speeling

Edited February 12, 2016 by Iain_S

[bizzard]

The only way to avoid head on collisions in tunnels is to go through them backwards.

[Machpoint005]

The only way to avoid head on collisions in tunnels is to go through them backwards.

 

That'd be arson.