So the visual lookout is vital in fog, not only to reassure yourself that you will see other boats that may be close but also it is a legal requirement under the Colregs. GPS positioning on the chart plotter can give you a lot of confidence that you know where you are, but radar and AIS have their limitations when it comes to collision avoidance in fog, and cannot be trusted implicitly to detect everything that is around you. They give you confidence to keep going when you can’t see ahead, and you tend to rely on them totally, which is where the danger lies. Modern electronics have made a huge difference to navigating in these conditions. We had no radar, no GPS, and no AIS, so it was a bit like navigating with a stick and we had to rely on listening and locating fog signals. At sea, things can happen unexpectedly, and you realize just how your world changes when visibility drops to zero. It was only a glancing blow so we were able to carry on with our voyage, but it was a lesson about the dangers of fog. We were just a few hours out of London, in the notorious Dover Straits on my first trip to sea at the age of 16, when we collided with another ship in thick fog.
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