BY SKIP ALLEN, SR.

The Federal Reserve may have given all of us an early Christmas present two weeks ago when it dropped prime interest lending rates by .5 percent. If you are shopping for a $100,000 loan and plan on financing 80 percent of it, the drop in rates will save you about $275 a year in total payments. Not a huge amount to be sure and the effect may be more psychological than anything, but that extra 20-something bucks in your pocket each month, plus the significant recovery this year in the stock market, may be just enough to turn the tide, so to speak, turning shoppers into buyers. Speaking solely for myself, nothing gets me quite as excited as a new boat, even if it’s just new to me. It makes me think of that book by the late Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

As most of you know, summer means time in the Bahamas to me. I love the place, always will. This summer, for lots of reasons–most of ’em good–we spent more time than usual at Paradise Island. Being around Nassau certainly gives us an active social life. Paradise Island is a beautiful place, although the goings on of the so-called “beautiful people” leave us old salts a bit bemused. Being around Nassau also puts us in contact with lots of news–the kind that comes on the coconut telegraph as well at that arriving in USA Today and my weekly dispatch from the office. (The reliabilty of my wi-fi Internet connection leaves room for improvement, but I prefer to think of that as a blessing rather than a curse.) Being so close to news central has put us in contact with two bits of sad news, the kind that makes you shake your head because the accidents were so avoidable.

In the first incident, a family was running up near Great Harbour Cay in their sport boat. It was a lovely day with excellent conditions on the bank. Seeing nothing but open water around him, the skipper engaged his autopilot and confident of his heading, busied himself with other things. The problem is that autopilots are deaf, dumb and blind. They are not collision avoidance systems and are no substitute for two eyes and a brain behind the wheel. The high-powered boat covered ground quickly. The fishing boat that hadn’t even been a dot on the horizon minutes ago was suddenly underneath the sport boat’s hull and Auto the Pilot neatly sliced the skiff in two. The man in the boat is no longer with us. Fortunately his buddy snorkeling was able to get out of the way. The moral of the story is that “Auto” can be a friend in need, but he makes a lousy captain.

Item two. There’s a reason that boats operating at night are required to have an anchor light or running lights. If you don’t have them or they don’t work, you shouldn’t be running after dark. This most recent case involved a well-crewed Bahamian patrol vessel and three guys fishing in the narrows at night in a small boat. Well, there used to be three guys. . . one of the two remaining alive after the collision noted that the only light aboard was a flashlight. As bad as I feel for the death of their friend, I also feel sorry for the patrol boat officers who will never get that accident out of their memories.

Running lights and an attentive lookout at the helm. Always!