BLUEMOMENT

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Posters on Scuttlebutt have voted overwhelmingly to ignore the ColRegs and are advocating destroying fishing gear. I can't believe this is going on on a publicly accessible forum . . . . no wonder they call us WAFIs. I'm starting to think that compulsory licensing might be a good thing - it would remove a lot of these morons.

I wonder that IPC continue to think that hosting a forum is a good idea. I don't recognise it as the place where I made my first tentative posts in 2004

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38882

and gave feedback here

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39116

and received so much assistance and comment not least from our very own Claymore, Jimi and Para.

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There's more than a few sensible sounding sailors posting on YBW who never come over here for a chat - why do you think that is?

(Yes I know, probably the shocking rep. of the site owner - before someone else says it)

Nick wrote:.
Posters on Scuttlebutt have voted overwhelmingly to ignore the ColRegs and are advocating destroying fishing gear. I can't believe this is going on on a publicly accessible forum . . . . no wonder they call us WAFIs. I'm starting to think that compulsory licensing might be a good thing - it would remove a lot of these morons.

Why so surprised? From the same source it is apparent that many posters don't think that the rules of the road apply to them either - speeding, parking etc. and when they get prosecuted for a trangression their first question is how to get out of it.
As far as destroying fishing gear, how many times has somebody posted a query and got the response 'go and visit them with a couple of big mates', suggesting that direct action is the correct way to do things?
I am glad to say that I live in a different world to an awful lot of Scuttlebutt posters.

Chrissie's post was a bit scary:

last time I was on a collision course was on the way back from Scuttlebutt Cherbourg. Argus was 'parked' and we were aiming to pass astern of her, all of a sudden she charges up her engines and turns 90 deg. and heads straight at us, that sickening feeling as the nav lights go through the sequence that shows shes turning, dilema, will she continue turning and we turn to port (heading up for us so loosing speed) to pass starboard to starboard,
or would she stop turning, and if we pull to starboard to pass each other port to port.
We gambled and with the engine full on, along with the wind (about to be in a huge wind shadow so loose benefit of sailpower) we went to starboard, and just got clear of her, a very close thing.
They probably hadnt seen us, night time, tiny boat. After my radio call, after we cleared because absolutely no time to radio beforehand, they put up a helicopter who circled us, checking no doubt that it wasnt an Ouzo situation.
The point is, it took everything my boat could muster to get ourselves off the colision course, the speed that things happened was breath taking and it was a real close shave. Clearly we were under the radar in some way.
There was no time to think about colregs, and as for standing on.....we would have been dead

She later says she got within 30 feet.

I was in Cherbourg that weekend and met Chrissie. On the way back we also saw RFA Argus (Poor shot of Argus on the Cherbourg Weekend to the West of the Island.) It was certainly performing some unpredictable manoeuvres, we wondered if it was doing some kind of search pattern. Nowhere near us.

I think Nina has the right idea with regards to Col-Regs:

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=a6TwAhT_C0Y[/youtube]

Old_Glow_In_The_Deep wrote:I think Nina has the right idea with regards to Col-Regs:

I guess the bit you're talking about is 3:20 into the clip, but the rest is worth watching too, or I thought so.

Old_Glow_In_The_Deep wrote:I think Nina has the right idea with regards to Col-Regs:

I would have to disagree with you there . . . although I suspect she has dumbed it down for a general audience. None of us I am sure go dangerously head to head with ships in some sort of mad macho lunacy. This would be in contravention of Rule 17, but so is altering course unnecessarily and prematurely. I was so impressed with Tim Bartlett's response on the SB ColRegs thread that I copied and PDF-ed it - LINK HERE. I think that is the best explanation of how to deal with Rule 17 in a practical situation that I have yet come across, and I will use it in any future teaching I do on the subject.

Great video though - thanks for posting it.

Nick wrote:.
There's more than a few sensible sounding sailors posting on YBW who never come over here for a chat - why do you think that is?

As you seemed to imply that I had some common sense on the SB Colregs issue (not the usual response to my posts!), may I turn your question round and ask why do any of us bother posting over there. We must know by now that any pearls of wisdom we attempt to share are wasted. As the beardie Jewish bloke said a couple of millennia ago - “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

Thus endeth the lesson .........

Nick wrote:go dangerously head to head with ships in some sort of mad macho lunacy. This would be in contravention of Rule 17

Slipping into pedantry overdrive, it looks like Rule 17 allows you to stand on towards the give way ship until it's too late for action by that ship alone to avoid the collision, if you so wish. In my book someone doing that would be going dangerously head to head with ships in some sort of mad macho lunacy and rule 17 permits them to do it.

Mark wrote:

Nick wrote:go dangerously head to head with ships in some sort of mad macho lunacy. This would be in contravention of Rule 17

Slipping into pedantry overdrive, it looks like Rule 17 allows you to stand on towards the give way ship until it's too late for action by that ship alone to avoid the collision, if you so wish. In my book someone doing that would be going dangerously head to head with ships in some sort of mad macho lunacy and rule 17 permits them to do it.

Not altering until it would be difficult or even too late for a much larger vessel to do so is not as dangerous as it sounds. A yacht is much more manoeverable than a ship and so is able to take effective avoiding action later than the ship can. The danger in altering prematurely at a point when the ship may still have seen you and be making or about to make a course correction is that the two manoevres will cancel each other out, with potentially disastrous results.

The most obvious and exaggerated example of 'safely' leaving it until the last minute would be a yacht sailing beam on to a large ship under way on a steady course and about to ram the ship amidships. In this example the ship is not very different from opr more manoevreable than a harbour wall or pier, so there is no great danger in sailing to within a few boat lengths before altering. (I would never encourage this as it may alarm the crew of the ship apart from anything else - it is just an illustration used to make a point). With the most dangerous situation - crossing the bow close ahead - obviously a much larger CPA is desireable, and a course alteration should be made earlier. It is a matter of seconds though for a yacht to make a 180 degree turn and with the beam of even the biggest ship at around 200 ft and assuming you are directly in line with her bow when you make the turn you will still be clear of the ship's track in four or five boatlengths.

So - if you are obeying Rule 17 you should stand on until it is apparent that the give-way vessel is not making a sufficient course correction. That still gives you, as the more manoeverable vessel, plenty of time to alter. Many yachtsmen seem to have this confused picture of ships as both completely unmanoeverable and simultaneously likely to behave with wild unpredictability if they go within two miles of them. It si not that difficlt or scary, and the people who wrote the rules realised that.

If you read the PDF of TB's thoughts on the matter you will see that he suggests we are into what he calls phase three - the point at which it becomes acceptable for the stand-on vessel to make a course alteration - at something under two miles. A rule of thumb for Fairwinds is to begin to consider altering when the bow wave of the ship has been apparent for some time and she is still on a steady bearing. By 'Going dangerously head to head' I mean willfully standing on into phase 4, at which point you MUST make a course alteration to avoid a collision.

As a (possibly over-simplified) rule of thumb I would say that under most circumstances altering at a greater distance than two miles is contrary to Rule 17 and leaving it to much less than one mile in open water is generally - but not always - unwise. In confined channels things can be very different. In the inner lead in Norway ships and yachts regularly pass either side with a CPA of less than 0.3nm and neither party feels in any way endangered. Having to sail in such close proximity with shipping makes you realise how surprisingly manoeverable most coastal shipping is.

Nick wrote:By 'Going dangerously head to head' I mean willfully standing on into phase 4

Yes, that's what I meant by it too. You said 'Going dangerously head to head' contravened rule 17. It doesn't.

Pedantic maybe, but true.

Wish I hadn't posted, this is feeling like YBW and I fear that's my fault for adding a rather pedantic post.

Mark wrote:

Nick wrote:By 'Going dangerously head to head' I mean willfully standing on into phase 4

Yes, that's what I meant by it too. You said 'Going dangerously head to head' contravened rule 17. It doesn't.

Pedantic maybe, but true.

Wish I hadn't posted, this is feeling like YBW and I fear that's my fault for adding a rather pedantic post.

I don't think we are arguing here. I think the tricky point is

Rule 17 : Action by Stand-on Vessel

(b) When, from any cause, the vessel required to keep her course and speed finds herself so close that collision cannot be avoided by the action of the give-way vessel alone, she shall take such action as will best aid to avoid collision.

It is possible to get too close for the ship to make an effective course correction but still be far enough away for you to make a safe and effective alteration without at any time getting 'dangerously close' to the ship. My personal definition of dangerously close is when I get scared or the oficer of the watch on the ship becomes alarmed. This shouldn't really happen until you get to within half a mile or so, but it would seem that some people have to change into their brown trousers as soon as a ship appears over the horizon.

Multiple ships are another matter, and then it is even more important that we don't start making premature course changes just because they are bigger than us.

Nick wrote:

Mark wrote:

Nick wrote:By 'Going dangerously head to head' I mean willfully standing on into phase 4

Yes, that's what I meant by it too. You said 'Going dangerously head to head' contravened rule 17. It doesn't.

Pedantic maybe, but true.

Wish I hadn't posted, this is feeling like YBW and I fear that's my fault for adding a rather pedantic post.

It is possible to get too close for the ship to make an effective course correction but still be far enough away for you to make a safe and effective alteration without at any time getting 'dangerously close' to the ship.

Yes, but none the less, I think if every time someone found himself on a collision course with a ship they sailed into Phase 4 before tacking off it would be fair to describe that as "going dangerously head to head with ships in some sort of mad macho lunacy." yet it would not be in contravention of Rule 17 to do so.

Not that it was worth me posting to say so.

Mark wrote:[Yes, but none the less, I think if every time someone found himself on a collision course with a ship they sailed into Phase 4 before tacking off it would be fair to describe that as "going dangerously head to head with ships in some sort of mad macho lunacy." yet it would not be in contravention of Rule 17 to do so.

Not that it was worth me posting to say so.

I think we are into semantics here. To me the important thing is to not automatically alter course every time you see a ship that you suspect may be on a collision course. Wait until you are definitely into phase 3.