Darwin in action...

[S/V Elusive]

Sometimes we just forget the bottom line - We are all obligated to avoid collisions, regardless of who is the encumbered vessel.

[hellosailor]

"The lesson?..."
Grasshopper, you have been misled. The lesson to be learned here is that we must thank Hunter for building a light boat, which can be sunk by conveniently small and inexpensive torpedos. You have to get the SMALL torpedos, the big ones just plow on through those plastic boats without stopping.
On sale this month in the marine department of Missles-R-Us, just minutes from the CIA campus in Langley, VA.<G>

[Dunkers]

You are quite correct is saying that there are no real drink sailing laws in the UK. It is self policing and generally it works very well. However, it seems that in almost every occasion, in my experience, that those that are drunk are "in charge" of power boats which are driven like cars. The owners think that because there is water in front of them that
a) there is enough water for their draft (assuming they know what draft is) and
b) they want to go there and no one should get in the way.

The Rules of the Road do provide for narrow channels but surely common sense must prevail anyway. I work on the principle that if a vessel is bigger than me then I'll keep out of its way whenever practicable. I was once coming up from Margarita to Grenada hard on the wind and I saw a tanker approaching me on a near collision course. It was just past dawn and I wasn't sure if I had been seen. I called the vessel on 16 and asked him if he could cut round my stern as I was hard on the wind and didn't want to lose any ground. He answered me immediately, told me that he had seen me and would alter course for me. Needless to say the ship wasn't a "flag of convenience" type and so had an officer of the watch with proper qualifications and actually looked out of the bridge windows - quite a rare event these days. If I had not had a reply then I would not have stood on relying on steam giving way to sail but would have altered around his stern.

In the UK, as I'm sure the same is true of the US, each port has its own extra rules regarding navigation in confined waters which gives priority to bigger vessels as they have so much less room to manoeuvre than us yachties.


More common sense and less death wish would be good

Cheers
David