Stick to COLREGS or keep out of my way ?

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

That was Shields Navigation tug, way back when we still had the railway bridge in False Creek.

Was that the Storm Point in 1975? Before my time, but I recall it came up again after the Sunboy collision.

Mind this was before the '72 rules:

The tug master was not only negligent in failing to keep the barge close hauled and in entering the Bay at the speed which he did, but he was also in breach of Rule 20(a) of the Collision Regulations in failing to keep out of the way of the sailboat. The skipper and crew of the sailboat were negligent in failing to keep a proper look-out contrary to Rule 29 of the Regulations.

[Pelagic]

I don't remember the tugs name but the ruling was as dumb and as simple as that.
The sailboat changed course and sailed between tug and tow

[Lodesman]

It seemed there was plenty of blame all around. Not the easiest read: https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/sc.../6222/index.do

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by Lodesman

It seemed there was plenty of blame all around. Not the easiest read: https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/sc.../6222/index.do

Yes, that's the one, but it seems my memory got the direction of the tug backwards.... it was outbound!

I went to Marine College with Peter Shields son a few years later and we became friends.

I discussed it then and obviously shared his bias.

Thanks for the link, had not read this before

[roverhi]

On our return sail from FP to Hawaii passed a factory ship around the equator. It was O dark thirty and the processing ship was DIW with minimal lights, no one on deck and no one on watch or any sign that there was as we sailed by within a 100 yards. About an hour later a smaller fishing boat passed us heading south to offload its cargo of fish. The fishing boat seemed to be keeping a watch.

The only time I've come close to being run down was in the shipping channel off Ventura, SoCal. We were barely moving under sail with my wife on watch. She saw the ship but grossly under estimated its speed. By the time she figured out it was going to ram us and called me on deck I just had time to do a crash tack and surf down the ships bow wave. 20' away those ships are huge. Never an indication that there was a watch on that ship, no horn, no change in course or speed. Our boat had high intensity running lights that were suitable for a much larger boat so it wasn't that they shouldn't have seen us.

Originally Posted by Kaimana

I "grew up" sailing off the California coast at the age of 19. From Pillar Point Harbor at the north end of Half Moon Bay, I sailed my 37-footer down south to Monterey, up to San Francisco Bay, Drake's Bay, and Tomales Bay, before finally getting the cruising kitty fat enough to cast off for those far sunny islands.

Coastal sailing there involved dodging lots of traffic: two shipping lanes full of ships, tugs with tows, salmon fishing boats, other fishing boats, and of course, other sailors like me. During a typical couple of hours at night, I'd often see three or four cargo ships, a tug, eight or ten fishing boats, and other lights that were too dim or far away to discern exactly what they were, or their course. It was easier to see at night than during the daytime, because the fog we often had in the daytime gave us much lower visibility.

I remember times it seemed like my head was on a swivel, as I mentally plotted converging or diverging courses, projected potential collisions, and changed my course fifteen or twenty degrees for five or ten minutes to be sure. Then did it again.

And one day, after many months of coastal sailing in the ship lanes, off I went on my first passage! As we left the California coast from San Diego headed for the Marquesas, the traffic got thinner and thinner until on the second day, we saw almost nothing. But I was still scanning every five minutes. Eventually, I relaxed. I think the entire rest of the trip we didn't see a single ship. This set me up for an almost-wreck on my second passage.

(Below) Spice, my Searunner 37, romping in The Blue Zone.



When it came time to leave the Marquesas for Hawaii, I couldn’t find crew. After trying to line up someone to help me sail the boat to Hawaii, I finally singlehanded my 37-footer out of Taiohae in the Marquesas, bound for Hawaii, one day before my visa was up. It was a cool passage; a whole lot of interesting things happened on that trip.

Because I was alone, I popped up on deck and checked the horizon a lot. Then, as the trip wore on, and I saw absolutely nothing out in the big open, less and less often. Then it was: “go down below, check the radio schedule with friends, make some soup and a sandwich and go up to the cockpit to eat”. Pretty chill, never saw anything anyway.

And I wasn’t worried about not being seen: I had a lime green 37-foot trimaran with a lemon yellow deck, a 50-foot aluminum mast painted Coast Guard Orange, two radar reflectors, and two huge 3-foot wide diagonal orange stripes on both sides of my mainsail and staysail forty feet off the water. I’d been told I showed up like a 100-foot steel boat on radar.

Only this time there was a Taiwanese longliner, a steel ship about 120 feet long, about 100 feet away off my port bow, doing about 8 knots.

I dropped the soup and sandwich, and hanging on the hatch board by my stomach, I spun the wheel out of the grasp of the self-steering hard to port. As soon as I saw we were going to miss them, I hauled myself off the hatch board, got to my feet, and looked at the ship. There was no one on the bridge, no one on the deck outside the bridge, and no one at the rail. I grabbed the fog horn and let them have a blast.

About three seconds later, a whole bunch of surprised, then smiling faces lined the rail of the fish processing area; where they bring the fish onboard the boat, gut and head them before putting them into the fish hold. I guess they’d all been playing cards or watching a videotape (Yeah, this was 1976) when I blew the horn. No one came out of the bridge; they were all belowdecks.

We all smiled and waved, long before that movie with the pelicans became popular. When I cleared their stern, I got her back on course, and re-engaged the self-steering. Sat down and shook for a while, then got up and made myself some more soup and another sandwich.

What was really noteworthy to me happened after that; when we nearly “coincided”, we were in 8-10 foot seas being driven by about 20 knots of wind. After the miss, I watch the longliner recede into the distance until I can’t tell them apart from the whitecaps; they’re only about 4 miles away. It gets dark next, and an hour and a half after I last saw them in the daytime, it’s gotten dark enough that I can see their lights. Running some numbers, I lost them in the whitecaps at 4 miles in daylight, but could still see them easily and clearly at night nearly 16 miles away!

What I learned from this, short term, was to sleep during the night and keep watch during the day; you could see a vessel a lot further away at night. I spent the rest of that passage sleeping at night, twenty minutes at a time, but not at all during the daytime. And boy did I ever sleep when I finally dropped the anchor in Hilo bay!

When I sold my 37 and built my 56-footer, I put a good 36-mile radar on her, and told myself my singlehanded days were over.

With Warm Aloha, Tim

[Uricanejack]

Originally Posted by Lodesman

It seemed there was plenty of blame all around. Not the easiest read: https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/sc.../6222/index.do

Interesting but complicated read. No date for the incident guessing approximately 50 years ago. It takes 5 or 6 years for a case to reach the Supreme Court.
Hard to tell what happened, obviously although the court eventually upheld a lower court decision about liability and damages. It doesn’t appear to have been a clear cut decision.

I suppose blame and liability matter financially to widows and orphans after the fact.

Doesn’t matter who is at fault or most at fault. Someone lost their life.
In an avoidable accident.

English Bay, False Creek, very much my home turf. Still lots of tug and tows though probably far fewer than back in the day when False creek was mor industrial.

Like most local sailors, I tend to give way to the tow boats which come and go.

Perhaps an unintended consequence,
The Towboat Skipper failed to act in time.
The tow boat skippers might have expected the sailboat to recognize the tug and tow. Followed by giving way.

Unfortunately this sailboat, skipper and crew were not local, not familiar with the local waters, not familiar with the types of vessel which may be encountered.
The skipper failed to recognize the tug as a tug and tow and only went behind the tugboat.

The result a small vessel trying to pass between a tug and its tow.
And a fatality. Easily avoided if either vessel had acted appropriately.

[Pelagic]

What I remember being told by a few older captains/pilots who worked the waterfront and Peter Shields's son, was that there was not a lot of room for the tug and tow to manuever coming out of the Creek with a brisk W wind blowing.
They all felt that the tug captain got screwed.

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by Uricanejack

Interesting but complicated read. No date for the incident guessing approximately 50 years ago. It takes 5 or 6 years for a case to reach the Supreme Court.

Surprisingly quick through the courts

On June 27, 1974, the tug Storm Point, which was on a return voyage to Vancouver from coastal operations, berthed at Johnston Terminals which is located on the south side of False Creek, a body of water which opens into English Bay. It was then engaged in towing the barge S.N. No. 1

[Windcall]

I gladly stay out of the way, even do an abrupt course change to let the watch stander know my intentions. Having no AIS I wish when hailing the bridge woul respond what his heading is out into the ocean

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Windcall

I gladly stay out of the way, even do an abrupt course change to let the watch stander know my intentions. Having no AIS I wish when hailing the bridge woul respond what his heading is out into the ocean

The radio operator is probably sitting at his set going " Aik, Dho, Theen, Char koi Hai" looking for another radio operator to chat with..

[DMF Sailing]

Originally Posted by boatman61

The radio operator is probably sitting at his set going " Aik, Dho, Theen, Char koi Hai" looking for another radio operator to chat with..

And when one responds "Yak, du, se, chahaar, panj, shash" the operator drops his mic and runs over to his laptop to make an entry in the "weirdest things I've seen" thread, because Afghanistan is a landlocked country that has no oceangoing shipping.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by DMF Sailing

And when one responds "Yak, du, se, chahaar, panj, shash" the operator drops his mic and runs over to his laptop to make an entry in the "weirdest things I've seen" thread, because Afghanistan is a landlocked country that has no oceangoing shipping.

Gujarat, Bengal and other parts of India have a very large number of radio operators and junior officers in today's merchant fleets so Urdu/Hindi is increasingly heard on the airways.. much like the change in accents in call centre's when you chat to James or Janet.. in Bombay..

[Uricanejack]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Gujarat, Bengal and other parts of India have a very large number of radio operators and junior officers in today's merchant fleets so Urdu/Hindi is increasingly heard on the airways.. much like the change in accents in call centre's when you chat to James or Janet.. in Bombay..

Sailed with a couple of Pashtun Secunnies way back when

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Uricanejack

Sailed with a couple of Pashtun Secunnies way back when

Good people.. careful if they offer you walnuts..

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Good people.. careful if they offer you walnuts..

you'll need to explain?