prv
Well-Known Member
Until now I've carefully avoided getting involved in any colregs threads - I generally have a working knowledge of the everyday requirements and am not interested in debating the pedantic theoretical corners. However, I've realised that I have a gap that is relevant in practice and would be interested to see what Scuttlebutt makes of it. So with some trepidation:
I usually motor from my berth down the river into the estuary, but the other evening I decided to sail. There wasn't a lot of wind, and what there was was against me, but I was in no particular hurry and had the tide with me. KS doesn't point particularly high nor tack particularly fast, so I was using almost the full width of the river on each tack.
There's a rowing club just upriver from my berth, who often practice in the evenings. As I was tacking down the river, several of their boats were whizzing past me. Mostly they would shoot past with neither of us needing to alter course. So far so good.
A bit further down, one of the rowing boats and its attendant coach in his outboard inflatable finished their run and stopped for a bit of a debrief, dead in the water. All well and good except that they stopped right in front of me; in the middle of the river, with me perhaps 30m off their beam, heading straight towards them. Remember I was only moving at a couple of knots in the very light wind.
A couple of strokes on the oars would have moved them out of the way. They were clearly watching me, although more in an abstract look-at-the-pretty-boat kind of way than assessing whether to do anything. Their coach apparently recognised the situation, because he applied a squirt of power to put himself between them and me, while continuing to discuss their rowing technique and pointedly ignoring me.
Clearly they thought that they had every right to sit in the middle of the river while everyone else manoeuvred round them. I was taught as a child that oars give way to sail.
I've since checked and found that in fact this situation doesn't seem to be explicitly covered in the colregs. They don't seem to provide a basis for the people who told me 20 years ago that sails trumped oars, but neither do they allow rowing coaches to deliberately position their ears in just the right place to use my cranse-iron as a cotton-bud.
In practice I stood on for long enough to make it clear that by stopping there they had introduced the possibility of collision, but tacked away before getting close enough for it to be an actual risk (remember very slow speeds). I probably also gave them a bit of a dirty look for good measure, but neither side said anything at any point.
What does the assembled company make of all this?
Pete
I usually motor from my berth down the river into the estuary, but the other evening I decided to sail. There wasn't a lot of wind, and what there was was against me, but I was in no particular hurry and had the tide with me. KS doesn't point particularly high nor tack particularly fast, so I was using almost the full width of the river on each tack.
There's a rowing club just upriver from my berth, who often practice in the evenings. As I was tacking down the river, several of their boats were whizzing past me. Mostly they would shoot past with neither of us needing to alter course. So far so good.
A bit further down, one of the rowing boats and its attendant coach in his outboard inflatable finished their run and stopped for a bit of a debrief, dead in the water. All well and good except that they stopped right in front of me; in the middle of the river, with me perhaps 30m off their beam, heading straight towards them. Remember I was only moving at a couple of knots in the very light wind.
A couple of strokes on the oars would have moved them out of the way. They were clearly watching me, although more in an abstract look-at-the-pretty-boat kind of way than assessing whether to do anything. Their coach apparently recognised the situation, because he applied a squirt of power to put himself between them and me, while continuing to discuss their rowing technique and pointedly ignoring me.
Clearly they thought that they had every right to sit in the middle of the river while everyone else manoeuvred round them. I was taught as a child that oars give way to sail.
I've since checked and found that in fact this situation doesn't seem to be explicitly covered in the colregs. They don't seem to provide a basis for the people who told me 20 years ago that sails trumped oars, but neither do they allow rowing coaches to deliberately position their ears in just the right place to use my cranse-iron as a cotton-bud.
In practice I stood on for long enough to make it clear that by stopping there they had introduced the possibility of collision, but tacked away before getting close enough for it to be an actual risk (remember very slow speeds). I probably also gave them a bit of a dirty look for good measure, but neither side said anything at any point.
What does the assembled company make of all this?
Pete
