I don’t even know where to go with this.
Go sail off the coast of Virginia when the Navy is out and about and you almost have to shut off the radio due to all of the non-stop gibberish between the Navy and the commercial traffic crossing. They called up one night and wanted a 20 mile CPA. TWENTY MILES. That’s across the fucking horizon.
Or go sail in the Gulf of Mexico. In or out of the fairways. Have the Captain (I guess you) come up to the bridge and see a ship <3 miles away with a CPA of 1.0nm and have the Captain ask “You talk to that guy?” Then answer nah, I trust the rules of the road. Doesn’t matter that you’re approaching Malfunction Junction and you have no idea where he’s going, and he has no idea where you’re going. As long as you see that red light, right? See what kind of response you get out of that. Or what would your response be?
Or just put up your funny lights on your sailing rig and hope that everybody stays the hell out of your way. I’ms sure you’ve never called anybody and been like “hey dude, clearly my sails are up and you have to move for me?”
But we’re talking about close quarters. You know, a collision. Doesn’t get much closer than that by definition. Maybe the radio would have helped in this situation?
In nearly every commercial instance, this is correct. But @john, you know as well as I do that the Navy hardly plays by those rules…