Just to be clear Colregs (
https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/pdf/navrules/navrules.pdf) have the lookout part under Section 5 which is part of the steering and sailing part. Under the anchorage part (30) there is no mention of special anchorages.
Back to my original thoughts on day signs and lights why not display them they do protect your boat and the people on it. It costs virtually nothing and increases safety. As to lookouts the proper thing when everyone in a small boat would be an anchor alarm to tell you if you are drifting and at risk of collision. If you have a smart phone free app that doesn't even use data!
Well, it's been an interesting discussion. However, maybe it is a facet of the Downunder attitude, but we seem to be a bit more guided by what one might call the 'bleedin' obvious' rule, otherwise known as common sense, rather than slavish adherence to Colregs, which were primarily developed for larger commercial vessels and few recreational vessels were around. Not ones that anchored anyway. Fortunately, our authorities seem to feel the same way.
How many folk on here are blithely unaware, as they approach a collection of vessels, obviously at anchor, that they are in fact, not able to move..? Who actually looks to see which of those is hanging a black ball..? C'mon...own up. You immediately see they are all basically pointing the same way, and there is an anchor line out front. I have to tell you, after all the hundreds of times I have anchored out in our Moreton Bay, I don't think I've ever seen a boat with a black ball, but I've certainly seen many anchored boats.
Sure at night, different story - everyone uses an anchor light. Except, I have to say, and which I think is crazy, if the vessel is moored off a private property, even if in the edge of a recognised channel, and not against a berth, they don't have to - not yet anyway. And that is the one scenario where if I had not been very vigilant, going up-river to Sanctuary Cove, a popular marina over here, I could easily have run into an unlighted large catamaran, as I did not have radar, and of course this sort of thing does not appear on a GPS plotter. In the daytime the thing would have been clearly visible as moored and not a problem, and a hanging ball would have made no difference.
Don't get me wrong. Where the colregs are relevant to our boating, I absolutely follow them, but some of them are not so relevant, and thankfully our authorities seem to have adopted a more pragmatic approach, clearly, than in some places, as they realise they have bigger fish to fry than booking boats peacefully at anchor for not showing a black ball. In fact, even reading the colregs, rule 30 especially, but also others, there is implied in quite a few places a lower level of compliance is expected in vessels less than 20metres, even 50m in some places. Just sayin'...
PS, for an interesting read, see here from sister forum link...
https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f57/do-you-use-a-daytime-black-ball-at-anchor-216017-25.html
To support my comments above regarding the norm here in Queensland, anyway I quote one post from the above...
While anchored in mud Bay near Airlie Beach last year I was approached by Maritime services and asked where my anchor ball was, after telling them I didn’t have one they said they would give me two days to get one. None of the chandleries in Airlie Beach had one so I had to get a taxi to Shute harbour to get one. We put it up at every Anchorage while on our travels after that, and the only time I ever saw another one flying was on a big superyacht that anchored off from us one day. Most people I told about it couldn’t believe that I’d been chatted about it.
