Judders
Active member
Daka's (apparent) wind up thread has got me going - Actually, I had a moment not disimiliar with a rower on sunday. We were motoring a 40' yatch in the middle of the channel and I have to say, I saw them late, we were having instrument trouble and I probably looked too long at the instruments. When I did see them, they were 100 yards infront of me. The channel at this point was about 30 yards wide (although there was a much wider are in which their four inch draft would have been fine). When I first saw them they were, like us, in mid channel but they were heading towards my starboard side. I believe that they hadn't seen us. Because of their direction of travel, I decided that being rowers, they would stand on and head towards what was technically the wrong bank. I therefore turned to port. Four or five seconds later, they turned very deliberately to starboard, cutting away from their original course, which was now clear, and cutting me off completely from turning back.
Now we got the usual mouthful of abuse that you get from rowers, interspersed with their rant about how we should be on the other side of the channel, but there seemed little to be gained by getting into a debate about colregs. They were right, I had gone down the wrong side, but only because they were heading to the wrong side and I took a punt on the idea that as they were not looking where they were going, the liklihood was that they would stand on.
Thoughts?
Now we got the usual mouthful of abuse that you get from rowers, interspersed with their rant about how we should be on the other side of the channel, but there seemed little to be gained by getting into a debate about colregs. They were right, I had gone down the wrong side, but only because they were heading to the wrong side and I took a punt on the idea that as they were not looking where they were going, the liklihood was that they would stand on.
Thoughts?