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Launching out front in fog is a definite DON'T!!! Just asking to be run over by a boat IMO.
With the price of radar coming down many boaters are buying them. The problem is kayaks don't show up well on radar. Add to this that some boaters are now running too fast in the fog due to the false sense of confidence in the radar.
An article I found from 2008:
A few seasons ago, one the large sea kayaking clubs in New England organized a series of radar tests with the Coast Guard's search and rescue station at Newburyport, Massachusetts.
It was a miserably wet day with torrential rains. The results of the radar testing on sea kayaks were equally miserable: the radar watchstanders reported they were unable to distinguish nearby kayakers from the chaff and clutter of day-to-day interference, waves and rain on their screens.
It was a sobering visit, especially for sea kayaking enthusiasts who frequent the fogbound waters of downeast Maine. Maine's remote waters often buss with the dodging, circling and busy at work lobstermen whose radar alarms are sometimes all that prevent them from colliding with others.
The same types of tests were later run again on a more formal systematic basis by the Coast Guard, local Maine lobstermen, and researchers from the Maine Sea Grant at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.
Their report, available as a pdf, takes time to wade through, given the report's thoroughness. In a nutshell, on open water and in fog, don't count on being detected in a sea kayak by radar no matter how much tin foil you fold up inside your hat or how fancy the reflector you attach to your aft deck.
One option, despite sometimes misinformed discussions dismissive of VHF radios, is to make a vhf calls on VHF channel 16 if you are in your sea kayak fog, at night or in limited visibility due to big swell, heavy whitecaps, darkness, heavy rain.
Of the recent tests in Maine, one adaptation of tin foil and a hat sort of worked: a tinfoil-covered sunhat. The rig gave to the radar readers a better response rate than any of the available commercial radar reflectors made for kayaks, and was certainly much less cumbersome and unwieldy, and less likely to interfered with rolling a kayak or rescuing a kayaker than an aft deck radar reflector.
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^^^^ Tin foil -Amazing that it would work. Very basic and home remedy style. Thanks for sharing.
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