No zebras were hurt, inconvenient, or disturbed by the creation of that post.
Sorry if you were.
Here is a sailboat getting in the way caught on video.
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Ports and the channels that lead to them were developed for commercial vessels carrying goods for commerce. At the time most of the commercial vessels were sail vessels. Later mechanical powered vessels were engaged in trade and rules were developed to reflect the difference in the ability to maneuver by the sail vessels. Made sense at the time.
How these rules got misconstrued in later days to include some recreational weekend sailor to have the same right as the now nonexistent commercial sailing fleet is beyond my comprehension. I like sailing but I recognize that itâs prudent to get out of the way of something that may impede progress, whether ship or soil.
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Apparently it was identifying as a fender.
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One of the things I learned from hanging ouy with a wafi is that if you give them five that boat is automatically disqualified from the race.
I always make it a point to do so when they test my patience in Long Island Sound.
Now we have the green recommended approach zone on the chart. I suppose this will give us some protection if someone gets hit.
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I remember a sea story where the USCGC Eagle was (I think) at some sail event off New England on a port tack and some WAFI in ~a 35â sail boat called them to ask when they were going to yield to him since he was on a starboard tack.
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Thinking you could be on any tack in a cabin cruiser is grounds for being sunk on the spot.
Did anyone tell the skipper those rules are only for sailboats?
I guess Iâve always called them the wrong thing. 
Itâs fixed now.
Maybe itâs time to change the rule so sailboats have to give way if the âpower boatâ is over twice the length of the sailboat.
These are higher mathematics.
How could they calculate this, if they they canât even differentiate the left from the right foot ?
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FYI:
Cabin Cruiser
Sailboat
Maybe its time for common sense.
To be clear, I have some idiotic power boaters cut me off when I was sailing my little Flying Scot but what was I to do? Take a photo and send to USCG? They couldnât care less. There are no traffic cops on the water. Until some collision happens no one cares. Most of the bitching between power boaters and sailing people is useless and in most cases ill-informed. The biggest WAFI idiots argue with ships and I have ZERO sympathy for them. When I was teaching my daughter to operate power boats and little sail boats I told her that every time she left the shore she should expect to see someone doing something stupid and prepare for that. If she did so she would never be disappointed in her expectation or preparation.
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âMaybe its time for common sense.â
Good luck with that. Any time licensing is proposed for pleasure craft operators, the pleasure craft manufacturers lobby descends on Washington like a plague of locusts.
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Yep, you can buy a car with cash and no license too. I guess itâs a freedom thing.
I just wrote a blog entry about this a couple of months ago, with a reference to a gcaptain article
https://tips.bayvessel.com/2022/04/29/dont-become-a-rule-9-violation/
And this experience.
https://tips.bayvessel.com/2021/08/10/does-anyone-know-the-navrules/
It goes both ways. While most deck officers are good, Iâve had some offshore experiences with ships that wouldnât know the NavRules if you slapped them over the head with the book. With AIS, there is no excuse for taking the âmight is right approachâ. I had to make all hands on deck maneuvers at 0330 to avoid a cruise ship that was overtaking my 22 meter boat under sail about 100 miles off the coast near Charleston. I also had to turn avoid an OSV heading south 250 miles out of Brisbane where the watch was completely asleep and unresponsive.
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Some WAFI called the old Eagle departing Galveston bay today asking dumb ass questions, âwhat speed will you be makingâ âwhat will be your required exclusion zone.â Dude was wicked excited to see the Eagle. We could have spit on her as she was overtaking on two while we were dredging Southeast of Pelican.
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Those are NOT dumb questions. Every now and again we get word of X yards/meters/furlongs/whatever exclusion around some type of ship or another. This person probably wanted to know the speed and required distance to plot a course for best viewing without breaking any rules.
I was once under sail and had constant bearing/decreasing range on a Dutch destroyer. I called the pilot aboard the destroyer and asked if the recently announced exclusion zone around US Navy ships applied to Dutch ships and could he remind me what that distance was? He said he had NO IDEA if any of this stuff applied to a Dutch ship and before I worked out anything water boiled up astern of the destroyer and he resolved the question with a good burst of gas turbine power 
- while there are dumb questions, there are even dumber non-questions. I always want to take a shipâ stern under sail, nothing sucks more than a sudden absence of wind when crossing ahead. So I am luffing up and creeping along southbound waiting for a faster ship to pass and the AIS shows them going slower every time I looked? WTF???
I called them and asked what was going on with their speed and they were annoyed with ME for slowing down, they thought I was about to cut in front of them.
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So True, I did not get into detail. Anywhere close to an approach or within a few miles hell yes! The USCG Eagle was still at the dock and the little sailboat was about 5-6 miles away and has been notoriously running right at the edge of the shipping channel the past several days. Maybe Iâm just triggered 
3 posts were split to a new topic: U.S. Judge Orders Tanker Owner to Pay $44 Million Over Deadly Destroyer Collision