It is never too early in Florida. Ambulance chasing is part of the DNA down here.
Google “florida lawyer billboards”, you will either laugh or cry.
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I did.
I laughed. Then I cried. Then I really hoped the new Grand Theft Auto video game my son is so excited for really skewers lawyers, the way it skewers the rest of American culture.
It’s been going on for a long time.
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here is what happens on a half mile of tow wire coming in to San Francisco bay in the approach channel
The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers
Shakespeare “James the VI”
There is so much wrong with this reporting it is worth ignoring. Biscayne Bay? Really, not even close for practical matters. These construction companies push barges around all the time with whoever knows how to move a throttle.They are construction workers not mariners. This has been going on for 50 years that I know of. Someone needs to learn how the dock construction business works in S. Florida before reporting on it. The sailing school likely had been operating for years there with no issues, wind or not until someone hired a guy to build a dock in the neighborhood .
Exactly - “not a channel”, and well off the beaten path. They shove those barges around like they are wee dumpsters on a closed construction site.
guess they don’t believe in day shapes down there Ball Diamond Ball on small barges like this are some usually attached to a mast to the top of the counter weight end of the crane to indicate the safe side to pass when working
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You get the same tug/crane barge setups in any area of protected water that has lots of waterfront homes - the Chesapeake Bay has ‘em, as does Long Island Sound. I would be amazed if the tug had a VHF radio on, let alone paying attention to it. Most of them do seem to have a lookout posted up forward, though.
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If the tug operator has any sense at all they’ve studied the Rules of The Road so well they know them better than any recently graduated 3M. They’ll need to know all of it for their upcoming trials. But before this incident happened I doubt they knew what dayshapes were much less the significance of ball-diamond-ball. 100% sure the kids who died didn’t know either.
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They are pretty forgiving and cheap to build. Once children get the bug they move up to a 7 foot 6 inch cat boat that is more difficult to sail that takes them through to 14 years old. The system turns out some pretty fair yachtsmen and women that are internationally known: The late Peter Blake, Peter Burling, Russell Coutts and any list of podium winners of past Olympic Games.
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Shoe boxes can be good fun.
I started about age seven in a Sabot, actually named after (and looking very much like) a shoe. The river would be covered in their colourful sails and, instead of strict application of racing rules, we first learnt the effective use of colourful language.
Built it with dad in the garage and have never stopped sailing. Indicative photo below.
P.S. River shipping just drove through the fleet and we’d scatter accordingly. No deaths.
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It was very hard for these sailboats to “scatter” that day as there was little to no wind. The chase boat was helping move a couple of other boats at the time of the incident. Having sailed similar boats as a kid, that sailboat at that time was pretty much not able to manuever. This terrible preventable accident really comes down to a tug captain that was not paying attention and a lookout that was nonexistent, or also not paying attention (which is the same thing). He and/or his lookout would have seen that boat for minutes prior IF they had been paying attention and not massively complacent. I know this area well, just north of the Port. Plenty of room for a small tug/barge to manuever, NOT a channel. I think this tug operator will end up in jail…for how long, who knows. Just my opinion….
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