Is Using Marine Radar Better Than Hearing?

The Bridge of a Navy warship is a serious place. Nevertheless, through all the pomp and tradition, humor pokes it’s face through the formal procedure to punctuate a life lesson. On one such occasion, our Guided Missile Frigate was fifty or so miles off Newport, Rhode Island in a pea soup fog. It was the type of fog where you could not see the bow with binoculars. Today, we were going to learn a nautical life lesson on how using marine radar in bad weather was not going to replace hearing, but complement our natural senses.

The Junior Officer of the Deck had his eyes glued to the scope head of the powerful SPS-67 Navy Radar. That’s Navy talk for a powerful surface search radar that can seemingly see the surface of the moon. It is powerful radar, with a capital “P”. The Officer of the Deck, the more experienced officer in charge of the bridge team, was peeking into the hood of the small Furuno, commercial marine radar on the bridge. He only glanced at the green and black screen now and again, in comparison to his junior partner who had his eyes glued to the powerful radar, which aided the targeting of surface contacts.

The Officer of the feck was listening. He was listening to waves lap against the steel hull in contrast to the high-pitched whine of the marine electronics and the hushed voices. He was listening for anything out of place, anything that did not belong. The ships whistle punctuated the thick murkiness every minute or so and return the sound as an echo.

The Officer of the Deck’s eyebrows pursed slightly as he looked in the small store bought radar. He went out to the bridge wing for a moment and then raced back on to the bridge. He ordered absolute silence as he told his junior cohort there was a boat close to us. The Junior Officer of the Deck did not let go of his grip of the Navy radar system.

He foolishly rebuked the Officer of the Deck out of the dangerous mixture of arrogance and inexperience, “there is nothing out there.”

The senior officer grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him to the Furuno bolted to the forward bulkhead of the bridge.

He scolded the young man, “see that blob right there, that blob is moving faster than the sea return, we are going to run that blob over, that blob is a boat!”

“I didn’t see it on…” an eerie sight crept into view and cut him off.

Just then, the forward mast of a small ketch came into view a couple hundred feet off the starboard bow. The sudden appearance of a sailboat had taken everyone aback. What were we to think, we could carry nuclear weapons, but could not detect a sailboat?

“Good morning Navy warship,” the radio crackled on Channel 16, “this is that ketch off your starboard bow.”

“G-g-good morning,” the seasoned officer spat out ashamedly.

The stodgy New England accent responded, “I’ll tell ya, my wife and I left Newport six months ago, what irony it would be to sail around this huge world just to get run over by your own Navy as you pull into your homeport.”

“Starboard to starboard?” He half-heartedly inquired about an agreement to the rules of the road.

“Aye,” the New Englander choked, “starboard to starboard, you have a good morning Navy warship.”

“Welcome home,” The Officer of the Deck offered apologetically.

Incredibly, the two vessels met each other starboard-to-starboard, barely had to maneuver. The ketch was heading in; we were waiting for the pilot.

Everyone remained silent for a moment. I broke the silence by saying to the Lee Helmsman, “That must be great to be on a boat with a chick and go around the world.”

The bemused Officer of the Deck looked over at me, “You must not be married.”

Everyone got a chuckle, but moreover everyone on the bridge that day subconsciously acknowledged the lesson from that day.