Did my best to avoid collisions, no matter what the rules were.
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And you suggest Iâm not informed? Where has he engaged with the substance of my comments?
Iâm the one wanting an informed discussion.
Iâm not going to play his game a bogging down in definitions of âright of wayâ as itâs unnecessary for the substance and was an incidental part of a comment used only as shorthand for a more complicated way of saying something in precise terminology.
How about YOU engage with the substance of my questions and stop splitting hairs yourself?
I agree with this. Mariners in general donât comply with the rules simply for the sake of compliance. They comply with the rules because most often thatâs what other vessels expect to happen.
For example vessel A is meeting vessel B in a head-on situation. The watch officer on vessel A alters course to stbd because that is what the watch officer on vessel B expects to happen. To do something unexpected would increase rather than decrease the risk of collision.
Of course the reason for expecting the course change to stbd is because thatâs the rule.
At last! Although you donât mention me you agree with my initial point, about which you have obfuscated ever since.
I said warships in my experience stayed away from merchant ships, thus avoiding any possibility of collision. It was a generality. Not a precise statement. Professionals can talk about professional topics in generalities sometimes, canât we?
Thatâs even trickier because âright of wayâ means something entirely different to non mariners than our colloquial usage of the term.
Imagine being this conceited and not knowing how usernames work both at the same time!!!
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This subject was supposed to be Collision Avoidance at Sea. With another title I could bore you all with âmy ship and the water skierâ, and other harbour frolics.
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Wonder what folks will think of this very controversial take on collisions at sea. They are inevitable. My take is driving ships is a human endeavor and perfection is not possible. The best we can hope for is to keep pushing it further and further out the tail on the probability curve, but zero is not possible.
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Blasphemy! How dare you! We are professionals and when I say there is NO RISK OF COLLISION, I know itâs true 100%!
For busy ports the number of collisions per transit or per mile is known or can be determined. So in that sense of the term risk of collision for any one transit can be calculated. That risk can never be driven down to zero.
Thatâs not the meaning of the term as used in the COLREGS or how it is used in court to determine fault.
Clearly, the rules need to be rewritten to reflect this, so that the risk (properly expressed in USD) is said to exist when it reaches a predetermined threshold value. This can then be calculated by the office, monitoring the proceedings by sat link, so they can tell the master what to do.
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The rules do not need to be rewritten.
Corporate bullshit and culture needs to be rewritten to take the strain off the people who are actually working at the pointy end.
Apparently, the company that I work for puts no âCorporateâ or âCommercialâ pressure on the Master; yet when the Master declines to sail the vessel into potential danger, the Master is constantly harangued by Duty Ops, Freight Department and pretty much every other dick with a phone.
Please reference my other post titled âShoreside Bastardsâ.
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My last few years of sailing were the most peaceful. I turned the phone off, and dispatchers would not harass me to sail when I knew I shouldnât. Had great equipment, mother nature had other ideas. Spent years running away from bad weather, kinda different now hoping one of those twirly things avoids me sitting on land. My retired pals in GOM know the feeling. They are having a rough year.