For many water sports enthusiasts, binoculars are nothing more than a maritime antique. If the skipper of today wants to know what is happening on the water, he looks at one of the many monitors that are taken for granted today, which, depending on the system and function, provide information about position and navigation, ship traffic and other relevant data.
We know the terms and abbreviations GPS and AIS , GMDSS and EPIRB, behind which the hard-working electronic helpers of the 21st century are hidden.
Only the small details, which are usually particularly important when travelling by sea, are often hidden from these devices. What do I mean? Everything that our oh-so-clever navigation instruments don't have on their "slips of paper". There are those funny little fishing flags that are neither on the electronic chart nor visible on the radar. If they follow you after you pass them, there's a real problem.
Or the flotsam floating close to the surface. Not to mention the helpless castaway in the red lifejacket who wants to be seen. These are all things that a skipper should be aware of in advance.
For this reason, the Collision Prevention Regulations state right at the beginning: "Every vessel shall at all times keep a proper lookout by sight and hearing and by any other available means appropriate to the circumstances and conditions". Of course, this paragraph leaves room for interpretation, but every good sailor associates the term "proper lookout" with a good pair of binoculars.
But what is a good pair of binoculars? What makes a pair of seaworthy binoculars, what requirements must they fulfil, what additional functions are useful? A whole bundle of questions that we want to answer in our binoculars test.
