One Whistle or Two??

One of the most important things to understand and keep straight in your mind when traveling along the waterways and rivers of the US and Canada is the concept of whistles.  Many times we would see a commercial tow boat with a barge (or many barges) coming toward us.  We'd call them and if we were lucky, they would call back with something that sounded like 'Thumitgumpgsalsueumgseeyouonone'  - which, once you run it through your handy Cajun tow boat captain to English translator, you realize is "Hello my good man, this is the tow boat Sally Sue - and I'd like to see you on one whistle." OK - so maybe you don't have a translator, but eventually you do get so you can sort of understand what they say - even if it's only enough to pick out the crucial words or 'one' or 'two'.

Horn signals (or whistles) have long been used by boat captains to indicate their intentions. The following are the most common sound signals you may hear or need to use:

• ONE SHORT blast of the horn (or one whistle) means that you intend to turn to STARBOARD

• TWO SHORT blasts of the horn (or two whistles) means that you intend to turn to PORT

• THREE SHORT blasts of the horn means that you intend to go in REVERSE

• FIVE or more SHORT blasts of the horn is the DANGER signal.  If you ever hear that, when you are out on a boat, look around and take evasive action to avoid a collision.

• ONE LONG blast means that you are coming to an area of restricted visibility

• ONE LONG followed by ONE SHORT blast is a request for a bridge opening

• ONE LONG blast every two minutes means that you are a power vessel in fog and are underway

• ONE LONG blast followed by TWO SHORT blasts every two minutes means that are are a sailboat in fog and are underway

• TWO LONG blasts every two minutes means that you in fog and are not underway  

• THREE SHORT blasts followed by THREE LONG blasts and THREE SHORT blasts is SOS - and we all know what that means

With that in mind, I created the following chart to indicate what to do in each of the the four passing situations you may find yourself in.  I printed this and pasted it on our dashboard as a quick reference.  

 Janet Crane. AT34 - #48  “Tardis”