Colregs blues

In the sense of pretending to be unaware of his predicament and frightening him like that. I can hardly image it was a leisurely dump with a copy of the Sun and a fag. He may have been caught short, and now he has a bruise on his head as well. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
Can I suggest that unless you can actually conduct a constructive argument you confine yourself to another forum?

Calling someone a "Twat" with no extra explanation is not helpful.
Call him a "Twat - because of X Y Z" if you must, but at least explain your insult. Not many on here are telepathic or clairvoyant and therefore (luckily) do not know the inner workings of your mind, such as it is.
 
[ QUOTE ]
in the worst case scenario you would only graze him, which at 3 kts wouldn't be fatal.


[/ QUOTE ] Only graze him. What sort of seamanship is that you're talking about where you play chicken with other people's boats?
There's a lot of water out there and the possibility of hitting another boat is fairly slim. What's the point of deliberately increasing the chances?

If you only grazed my stern because you couldn't be sensible enough to leave a bit of sea-room I'd do more than throw a mouthful at you.
 
There but for the Grace of God go I

and a good many more of us, I should think.

My boat weighs about ten tons, all up, has a long keel and a long bowsprit.

In the situation described, I will normally make it very clear that I am giving way, by making an exaggerated alteration of course, so that it is obvious to the "stand on" vessel that I am taking action and the other vessel should not. I will then bring her back on the wind to lose as little ground as possible, which means that I am aiming to pass quite close under the other boat's stern.

Dunno about one metre, but ten metres, certainly, in quiet weather conditions.

I also make a habit of tacking up through moorings, where the gaps between moored boats are not that big - much the same situation.

I don't see anything wrong here, given that this was not in the narrow part of the channel.
 
In context, there are circumstances where the metre clearance would be sufficient - not saying this was or wasn't such a situation, as I wasn't there. When I say "worst case scenario", I mean the one-in-a-million unforecast event that turns a perfectly good plan into an extremis situation. This could happen whether you planned to pass at 1 metre or 100. There was a recent thread with a link to a video where one boat got caught up in the current and slammed into another hung up on a wreck going around the Needles (not my neighbourhood, so excuse errors in my recall) - even passing at considerable distance is not assured.
I maintain my original observation, that as the stand-on vessel, if I find myself compelled to tack close in front of the overtaking vessel, then I haven't lived up to my rule 17 requirements; I should not expect the overtaking vessel to veer dramatically off course to compensate for my lack of seamanship.
Being the 'stand-on' vessel isn't some god-given right to do anything you please - there are responsibilities - if navigation or anti-collision requires a deviation from maintaining course and speed, then it should be planned as early as possible, so as to be clear to the other vessel(s).
 
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