DHeckrotte
Guru
Good grief! 89 responses! Thank you Mike and Tina for posting and responding. And thank the rest of you for chiming in. That's what this forum is for, and we all benefit.
. The mast head light is irrelevant, the OP knew there was a sailing sailboat present and was not misled. Continuing observation of the sailboat and timely appropriate action to avoid danger is a live issue. 5 blasts would have been a good first step to defusing the developing situation.Come on.... His anchor light may have been on, but he was moving and was under sail. He was in violation of the rules by leaving the light on but that doesn't change the fact that he was under sail. The light also had no influence on the incident or the outcome. If anything, it made the boat more visible. FWIW, I have also used the flashlight on the sail trick at night, even though it tends to trash our own night vision...
Knowing the rules wont keep people safe? I've heard it all now. To hell with rules, I'll remember that next time I'm northbound in the Mississippi River on a loaded tanker!
You made my day! I have a strong vocabulary and it is an exceedingly rare and pleasant experience to come across a term that I am unfamiliar with. I have never heard the term "allision" and had no idea what it meant. Thanks!
well sailors...we have a couple people that think it's OK to run your motor, keep the sails up and do whatever you want. Have at it....
wonder what's next....
I remember when the USCG started being adamant about using the term allision with boats striking bridges.
In the field we were "what the heck is the difference?"...but I guess the Marine Safety Offices and the lawyers thought it was the term to use...obviously it had ramafications for maritime hearings and fault finding..
Given that we could see his red nav light and white mast light from when we first saw him at A and as he sailed along the shore toward C I could tell he was proceeding on a course that was reciprocal to ours. That is why I stopped watching him and was more focused on looking for other boats. Because I was able to see his red nav light at first then his green light as he crossed in front of us he must have tacked.Can you clarify the sailboats light display? (Edit: I just noticed post 56 where you cleared it up) You said 360 degree light and it's green starboard light. Are you referring to the tricolor as the 360 or was it displaying it's anchor light. Either case would have been incorrect as a sailboat should not display both the tricolor and deck level navigational lights but it is commonly done and it certainly shouldn't have displayed an all around white but others have pointed out, an anchor light would appear as a steaming light even if it is at the top of the mast, typically when motor sailing there is no headsail so a steaming light halfway up the mast would show but if you are motor sailing with a jib/genoa it would be obscured from leeward.
Yes, it was a 360* white light, not a tri-color. I could see it was white when we first spotted him and even after he passed us it was still showing white.
You also said that the sailboat was moving very slowly when you first saw it, yet your diagram shows the yellow path being roughly 3-4 times longer than your path from point D to the point of intersection. I'm sure your diagram isn't to perfect scale and distances are hard to estimate at night, but you must have been moving extremely slowly for this diagram to match the event. If his final course was a starboard tack broad reach, he would have been going straight upwind from point A to B.
My drawing on that photo is definitely not to scale. We were moving at around 6 kts at that point. When we first spotted him we had just come under the bridge that is shown behind us on the photo. We continued to track him well into his path along the north shore of the river and I only stopped watching him somewhere along that path. With a SSW wind that was blowing, he had the wind on his aft port quarter as he went from A to B, then on his port forward quarter as he went from B to C. As he approached us from our port side and passed in front of us he was heeled away from us, his boat heeling to his port side. That is when I saw his green nav light and and white mast light.
Most of us spend very little time on the water at night and it is skill that requires a lot of practice for true proficiency. It can feel so vacant on the water, that many are lulled into a false sense of solitude. If you were moving as slowly as the your diagram would suggest, he probably didn't distinguish your lights from those on shore behind you. Personally, taking 1/8 - 1/4 mile away from you was not a failure to Stand On, given the location, that is a relatively long distance away and should have been plenty of time for the burdened vessel to avoid him. He also has a responsibility to himself to live to see tomorrow and he could have been more defensive.
(If he was on a indeed on a starboard broad reach, the diagram is accurate and the wind didn't shift, he didn't tack at between C and where your paths met, he just bore away)
Most operators have enough of a sixth sense that even when everything is going wrong...disaster is averted before the bottom line.
You averted an accident...sooooo.... you probably are very safe despite the things you pointed out that you might have done differently.
To even recognize those things says a lot.
Like I posted...a close call but a minor one...not like you grazed the side of a supertanker.
Learn, move on and enjoy!
Too many worry warts give me a headache....
.... and I am the cautious one most of the time.
In response to someone's request for pics of the ladies we had on board, here are a few to enjoy. These were taken while we were drifting and waiting for the sun to set...
Man...compared to many here I guess..... I let the goobers do what they want and pleasure boat whenever I want.
I'm also willing to bet that is not what BandB was getting at as well. But I laugh at hearing "there is the book then there is real life". That book covers real life. There is not a situation you can get into that the Rules hasnt covered. I know this because it is my real life. I put food on the table and a roof over my family's head because I work on the water. These rules keep me from getting into a collision.
It doesnt take long to learn them, at least the main rules. Make time to learn them and what they mean to keep everyone on the watet safe.
Mike
Now everything is clear ! I finally understand why the skipper of the sailboat quickly changed his course to one perpendicular to your course, so many pretty ladies can't be missed, at any price !!
sailboats tack; it's what they do.
My takeaway from all this is not to pleasure cruise at night with a bunch of people on board.
https://www.facebook.com/fljetski/videos/1650543235237748/
This is an example of the decisions being made out there.
I don't think there was any real decision process involved there.
Just a near miss with Darwinism.
Yeah....but he might get on tv, have his 5 minutes of fame, claim to be a boating expert.....As a famous comedian puts it, "That boy's got a lot of stupid in him".
Ted
With a SSW wind that was blowing, he had the wind on his aft port quarter as he went from A to B, then on his port forward quarter as he went from B to C. As he approached us from our port side and passed in front of us he was heeled away from us, his boat heeling to his port side. That is when I saw his green nav light and and white mast light.
He was on a broad reach, sailing almost directly across the wind as he approached our course. His boat was heeled away from us so he would have had his back to the wind. Assuming that he would have been watching the area ahead of his course he most certainly would have seen us on a closing path.
Actually, if the sailboat had a white light showing foreward, it wasn't a sailboat but a powerboat with sails up...not sure how that changed the "rules".
Also if in a confined waterway...one might consider it a narrow channel and again the sailboat may have been in the wrong. Rule 9.
I am not going to nit pick a situation that I have no evidence in.... but stopping your boat and missing another by 15 yards isn't even a close call in my neck of the woods.
I had near misses like that 10 times a day when towing in the NJ ICW..... and heck had striped bass trollers miss me by less the whole upper part of the Chesapeake Bay last December headed south...fortunately in daylight.
That's really why the navrules/Colregs are BS for boats like most of ours.....we are responsible to avoid collisions...and it's pretty dang easy with reverse.
The trick is seeing all the chuckleheads before they get to close...and that may be me sometimes because I am watching out for the third chucklehead in the situation.
... If you're out on the water enough, you'll see everything. A lot of what you'll see will make no sense. Some will be total stupidity.
...
There is a worse group though PWC's. I've seen them cut right in front of cargo ships, apparently not grasping that if they did fall or stop, there is no way the ship could stop. I've had them come within less than 10' of my stern wanting to get a huge wake to jump and seen them get airborne and return to the water no longer on the PWC.
Everywhere we boat has different challenges. On the lake the disparity in speeds led to issues. You had a lot of 60 mph bass boats who were in huge hurries to get to the next fishing hole.
You're right about rules for 2 boats. A busy lake on a Sunday with thousands of boats, there are no rules.