This is liable to get … interesting.
Earl
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Wow!
Several layers of bad things going on. “Well you are going too fast to be a sailboat, never mind that course change I’ll run you over” and then not stopping to render aid. The two failed liferafts weren’t good either.
- reminds me of using an expired liferaft at a pool party, it needed to be repacked anyway. It inflated and then deflated, the last repacker had not replaced the valves. Then it had canned food and water but no can opener.
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I don’t understand how Yachting World only just got around to writing this, 3 months after everybody else!
I have left this a couple of days just to see if anyone else can justify racing yachts through the Dover TSS and think this is a good thing.
Personally,and I know the Nautical Institute,god love them, have been pushing for a change to the steering and sailing rules that gives a sail driven vessel priority over a motor driven vehicle in certain circumstances. This was written when sailing vessels that were hard to manoeuvre and power driven vessels met in open waters.
Today little boats with rags on can easily out manoeuvre a large cargo ship.
And what the heck happened to the idea of keeping a watch when you are either single handed or exhausted because there is no sleeping facilities available.
These individuals are touted as heroes.
I call them out as idiots.
Prepared for incoming.
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(I confess to being an avid sailor, frequently indulging in daytime coastal single-handed sailing, and having raced boats as an amateur in my younger days. Please defer the shitstorm until reading my entire post)
In a nutshell, in my opinion single-handed or short-handed endurance racing on high speed sailing boats in dense commercial large ship traffic inevitably results in abuse of the spirit of the colregs.
Misuse by a minuscule proportion of the sailing world should, however, not result in fundamentally changing these rules, as, with most of our rules and laws, most people tend to comply with common sense. With regard to the colregs, first priority should always be to handle situations with a sufficient margin of error for the colregs not come into play at all.
The stretching of the spirit of the rules of the road seems to be accepted systemically, as, from the YM article, “race organisers had altered course to take the fleet back across the Ouessant Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS, or DST in French). This is common – the Class 40s, along with the Figaro and other classes, frequently race across the shipping areas, though the diversion meant this particular race would cross a TSS six times”.
That said, nothing, nothing whatsoever, excuses a master who continues on his journey after running over a boat.
There is one sentence in the yachting monthly article, that says it all with regard to sailing races in busy waterways: “we’re basically crossing a freeway on a bicycle.”
This, in conjunction with the candid assertion “those decisions that we figure would be quite standard end up being really difficult when you haven’t slept for a couple of days” blatantly documents the recklessness of the whole endeavor.
Even if it means losing a race, I personally would never ever attempt close quarters bow crossing of a high inertia ship. A rudder could fail, a sheet may come loose, a mast may come down, I myself might misjudge the other vessel, all at the most unfortunate of moments. This is so deeply ingrained in my principles, that even competitive adrenalin and testosterone will not budge that red line in my head. Sleep deprivation, however could well do that, as it inevitably leads to deficits in attention, cognitive decline, microsleep attacks, decision making errors, and may even induce psychotic symptoms.
Often, things play out, sometimes not. In 2021, the German single handed racer Boris Herrmann collided with a fishing boat at night, while being soundly asleep, ironically 90 miles from the finish line of the Vendée Globe single handed race around the world, after having successfully navigated nearly 30.000 miles of open water, storms and heavy seas single-handedly. By sheer luck, he stayed afloat, unharmed.
Am I thrilled by high-speed, high-tech sailing machines pushing the limits of technology and physics? Definitely, yes. Do it in daytime, in coastal waters, accompanied by motorized crash boats.
Am I in awe of the physical and mental strength of single/short-handed endurance racers? Definitely, yes. Do it away from commercial traffic lanes. Don’t cross a motorway on a bicycle.
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Was following this event. When I saw this course amendment (after the race had started!), I thought it was crazy. They cut out the legs around Tuskar Rock (in relatively quiet Irish Sea area), and substituted 2 additional crossings past the ends of the Ushant TSS to round Chaussee du Sein instead. Yes, the actual TSS was no-go but shaving the ends was the same danger as cutting across!
I hope that the Race Committee are held to account for endangerment.
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The planned course - 2 Channel traffic crossings…
The actual course, eventually 6 Channel traffic crossings…
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Well put.
You summed it up much more eloquently than I could.
The NI, god love them, have been pushing in the past for a change in the rules. I favour that approach for one reason alone. It will rid the colregs of the only rule that an awful lot of sailors know.
Steam gives way to sail.
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Section 1, rule 10 seems to cover TSS sufficiently.
Ordinary sailing boats, in comparison to powerboats or small motor vessels, are disadvantaged enough with regard to manouverability, as to warrant keeping up the state of affairs in the general rules, imho.
Anybody who tries to enforce stand on status from a tiny GRP or carbon hull against a full-sized ship with all of its inherent inertia and limited close-quarters vantage, is definitely not complying with the overarching clauses of rule 2 (a) and (b).
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Agreed. 10 (f) & (h) were ignored completely. 10 (j) still applied because at the start of the interaction, the ship was still in the TSS, a mile to Stbd of the sailboat track (as per the race site tracker at the time)
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Seems you all missed my earlier.
Steam gives way to sail.
Full stop
I thought that in both of my previous posts I had addressed this issue, even if somewhat surreptitously.
I think that, even today, this rule makes sense in general. It is clearcut and unambiguous.
The vast majority of motor vessels around the globe are not VLCC/VLCS but speedboats and small to medium-sized motor boats. In comparison to these, ordinary sailboats are slow and have various constraints regarding swift manouvers, depending on wind angle and velocity, wave height and others. These constraints are often difficult to judge for motorists.
I would not be against differentiating the regulations with regard to vessel size, but finding international consensus on a cutoff value would be difficult. Situations at sea might become more ambiguous, which would be detrimental. Maybe being more generous with the designation of restricted manouverability might be an option, but I have not thoroughly thought this through.
I am sure, however, that simply reversing rule 18 (a) would lead to a significant increase in loss of life at sea.
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Here is simplified explanation of the Rules of the sea for those operating leisure crafts in Norwegian waters:
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Great post Float.
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Heard from someone in France the skipper of the freighter is looking at 10 years in jail.
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Since the days of Bernard Moitessier, single-handed and short handed sailors are being revered in France. The Vendée Globe race has TV/streaming audiences comparable to the Tour de France. Les Sables d’Olonne has been christened “the sailing Mecca” of the world. Important events there draw crowds of spectators and are proper family events. Thus, public opinion will be heavily slanted towards the sailors, no matter how foolhardy the race routing or the bow crossing decisions may have been.
But then, to reiterate from my previous post:
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As of today, the incident is not listed yet on the French NTSB/MAIB equivalent’s (Bureau d’enquêtes sur les événements de mer (BEA mer) “ongoing investigations” website.
Race Committee actions and ColRegs interpretations aside for a moment, check out some of the statements and details in this article (which I had not seen before)
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Nothing excuses saying you will give way and then deciding not to either. That said, this isn’t a 100%-0% collision, the racer should never have trusted ANY crossing traffic to the extent they let it hit them. Unlike the kids getting run over by the barge, they had plenty of way on and could change course.
Some SIs (sailing instructions) will say not to claim stand-on with commercial traffic even when you have it, this is more for harbor racing then offshore. We had an SI once that disqualified you if you got 5 horn blasts, so one of the local pilots found out about it and honked at everyone 
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