Route du Rhum Part 2

[philmarks]

Got to get this out as someone frustrated by creeping bureaucracy, risk assessments and passage plans and the like (which I do as a matter of course but don't like a nanny state telling me to do it).....

1. I assume the major players in this race are on boats which are company owned and sponsored (arguably used for commercial purposes (?) and therefore MCA certified); boats built to suitable scantlings and have an RCD certificate - they are therefore one assumes Cat A to do this race

2. I expect that they all prepared passage plans before their trip, properly considering all the risk factors (weather forecast, routing - Biscay in November, adequate crew - ie ability to keep a seamanlike lookout, and so on....)

Don't get me wrong, I find the single handed racing business absolutely fascinating, but how on earth do the MCA and equivalent authorities elsewhere tacitly accept/allow this event? I speak as one who now has to prepare a passage plan to sail from Portsmouth to Poole even in fair weather. I don't suggest it's stopped, all I want to see is a SENSIBLE policy that is fairly enforced.

If you want to drive an F1 car in a race then you have to serve the apprenticeship and get the appropriate racing licence AND you still cannot race on the public highway.

I've had enough of policy wonks. Getting into dangerous territory now having read today about the battle between the Statistics Commission and the Office of National Statistics AND spent half an hour trawling through that massive thread about the wonders of Hitler should get back to www.reformbritain.org.uk.

Apologies for venting my spleen, but the Route du Rhum issue is serious. Capable sailors do the sensible planning anyway, but IS the passag eplan stuff really going to stop the idiots who see the press that Ellen gets up a mast in a Southern Ocean gale and say, ok I can cross the Solent to Cowes then without any worries or training.

 

[Jeremy_W]

>>>I've had enough of policy wonks. Getting into dangerous territory now having read today about the battle between the Statistics Commission and the Office of National Statistics AND spent half an hour trawling through that massive thread about the wonders of Hitler should get back to www.reformbritain.org.uk.

Err, do you mean "http://www.reformbritain.com/" - Paddy Minford, Ruth Lea, Chris Woodhead, Stephen Pollard and all the usual suspects you can read saying predictable things in virtually any newspaper every week?

 

[Twister_Ken]

Don\'t buy newspapers

It only encourages the bastards

 

[Jeremy_W]

I\'ve done worse than that

I actually bought Chris Woodhead's dreadful book "Class War". It's not one I would recommend to anyone.

 

[Cornishman]

Slightly off subject, but still with R du R, I have more than once been slapped down for questioning the legality of single handed long distance sailing with respect to Rule 5. Nobody in the heavily sponsored single handed world wants to pay more attention to the rule than turn their backs on it.
As I have said here before, I have been teaching RYA students the illegality of single handed long distance sailing for many a long year, only to be told not to make too much noise elsewhere because the RYA Patron has seen fit to lay her sword upon the shoulders of such as Robin K-J, Chay Blyth, Francis Chichester and Alec Rose and make them all knights for breaking Rule 5!
It seems that there is one set of Rules for most of us and another, including all those mentioned here, for the privileged. As R du R is a French race I imagine many a blind eye has been turned upon it.

 

[bedouin]

Rule 5 - more honoured in the breach...

It seems that many people take a very elastic interpretation of Rule 5. It is widely believed that many commercial ships now rely almost exclusively on Radar for collision avoidance and no longer bother with a serious visual look-out.

The rule (probably deliberately) is open to a range of interpretations. You take the position that it requires a continual visual lookout to be maintained, but there are other reasonable interpretations. It is not possible to watch every degree of the horizon every second of the day - so it comes down to your opinion as to how often it is necessary to check arround. Since the sole purpose of Rule 5, or indeed all of IRPCS, is to prevent collision, it can be argued that any form of lookout sufficient to detect the risk of collision in good time is adequate.

Clearly where two boats collide - the rules have been broken. In the case of the yacht that hit the freighter - the freighter is clearly as much to blame as the yacht, if not more so. Assuming the yacht was stand on vessel then it was the responsibility of the freighter to take avoiding action - which it didn't do, therefore it cannot have been maintaining an adequate lookout.