Two professionals in the fog: held to a high standard??

[El Pinguino]

Only if its your boat that you had hoped to sell within the week

Unless it was really really well insured for more than the sale price ..

[Tillsbury]

Agreed. The fine is irrelevant in the scheme of the costs to the skippers. I don’t know about marine insurance, but if that was a car I doubt the insurers would pay given the state of the craft. Setting off at 0400 without a port nav light and continuing down a busy channel in heavy fog when your only means of navigation has failed are both almost unbelievable situations. I very much doubt whatever insurance they had would pay out.

[bobnlesley]

Originally Posted by AiniA

With AIS we have had the opposite experience with ships making 1 or 2° changes when 10 to 20 miles away and then going back on the original course right passing. Without our AIS we would never have seen the changes.

We've found just the same, since fitting an AIS transmitter/receiver: We're aware of more commercial vessels courtesy of the AIS's screen, but actually 'see' far fewer, they appear to note our presence whilst still beyond the horizon and make a slight course adjustment to avoid the WAFI.

[30yearslater]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

One time, long ago, before the days of GPS, and before I had much sailing experience, (long before AIS, too) it happened on MY watch that there was northbound and southbound ship traffic on our route. It was a moonless night, and myself in the cockpit, watching the lights from the ship overtaking from astern, and the lights of the one coming towards us. This occurred on the run from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, open ocean, but sort of coastal, before we learned to try and avoid shipping lanes.

Watching, watching. Getting a little nervous, I was. Well, of course, they were professionals, and there was no reason to pass each other closely (and may well not have been aware of our tiny craft at all, who knows?) They passed each other safely, and we were like a skimpy strip of bacon between two monster pieces of bread!

************

One of the interesting things about the collision in Jim's link is the quantification of blame to the officers in charge of the vessels, as reflected in their fines.

Over the time I've been a CF member, I have read Dockhead's navigation threads, very interesting, and come to the conclusion that given the accidents that have happened involving motor yachts vs. sailboats, that taking action long before Colregs would be involved may be the safer course. The speed differential is so great that by the time you decide to ditch Colregs' maintaining course and speed, you may not be able to get out of the way in time. It happened in the Caribbean two years ago, with loss of life, and it happened in the US this year, with no injuries but loss of yacht.

Finally, i would say that now, I might have changed course out to the West, to get clear of those two ships. They felt way too close to me back then.

Ann

Same here Ann. When I cross the four separate shipping lanes here on Lake Ontario the big boys can do whatever they like. I will go out of my way to avoid them up to and including turn around and run away. Those suckers are going 3 times my speed on a good day and silly games of closing angles aren't in the interest of self preservation. This is especially true when the tsunami bow wave is 12 feet high or better. I have a simple rule, never assume anything. It's kept me safe and my boats afloat so far.