« Borehole Drilling in Dublin Bay | Home Page | Lasers Pinch at the Windward Mark »
Sound Off, 11-1-11
January 11, 2011
The Commissioners of Irish Lights have chosen this auspicious day to formally shut down the last fog signals around our coastline.
The last lighthouses to lose their horn are:
Fastnet
Roche’s Point
Old Head of Kinsale
Ballycotton
Hook Head
Tuskar Rock
Kish
Dundalk
St. John’s Point
East Pier, Dun Laoghaire
CIL says the decision to turn off the fog horns was because of “rapid advances in marine navigation technology” and the fact fog horns are “not an aid to navigation”. In other words, every mariner needs to have a working GPS receiver and a chartplotter.
I beg to differ. Over the years, sailing small boats (too small to have GPS) in Dublin Bay, the East Pier fog horn has been the only way to find home when fog rolls in over the bay.
And, when it’s snowing, we could hear the East Pier fog horn all the way to Terenure.
Notice to Mariners from CIL, 10 September 2010.
Factoid of the day: 11111 in binary = 31 in decimal
Topics: Sailing | Comments Off on Sound Off, 11-1-11
Comments are closed.