Sailing retro low tech - legal risk?

[PetiteFleur]

I always insist that passengers in my dinghy wear a lifejacket, which I supply. I had a situation a few years back when I had three teenagers going for a sail, I produced lifejackets and one said quite forcibly 'I'm not wearing one of those' and I said you can stay ashore then. When he realised I was serious he grudgingly put it on, with help from his two friends. Children of course wear lifejackets in the dingy and on board. Adults can choose when on board unless I insist.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

I have a boat with zero tech, we’re not even allowed an echo sounder in the class rules, definitely no GPS, no looking at your phone, though cleary that’s just a gentleman's agreement. My other boat has everything we can carry. No radar, due to weight and windage. I prefer to know where I am, and how much water I’ve got.

 

[Skylark]

A prudent navigator will have the ability to check his work by more than one independent means. Eyes, plotter, paper charts, radar etc can all work in harmony.

 

[CM74]

Arguably, you could be in more hot water for not having paper charts than not having a plotter.
Most are not approved for navigation, and for example, I'm on a <500gt tug - our paper charts are the only "approved" ones. We do have a good plotter (not a full ECDIS) but it's for reference/information only.
There's no requirement for us to have one at all!

 

[Chiara’s slave]

There is a tendency here towards the sackcloth and ashes mentality. Ask about sailing clothing, anchors, electronics, even sails, some folks take some form of perverse pleasure, maybe inverted snobbery, about how little things cost, how long they make them last, and their mission to find exactly the same 50 year old gear to replace it with. I’m not an advocate of relying totally on expensive electronics, I still mark a paper chart if on passage. But whats the point of cutting off your nose to spite your face?

 

[capnsensible]

Generally when this topic does its routine appearance, it's great for boat owners to say how they have equipped their own yachts. Fair one.

However, there are a huge number of sailors who charter, crew on others yachts, etc etc who have no say in what equipment is fitted but are still capable sailors. There are also those who can't afford the latest gadget. And delivery crews and skippers.

Always glossed over too is that many who go to sea for pleasure suffer from seasickness especially if asked to plot on a chart down below or even look at a cockpit screen. Seen many of these! Especially in the first couple of days.

But as Skylark points out, the good navigator takes input from all sources at his/her disposal, assesses and steers accordingly.

I was fortunate to be trained to always have a back up to your backups backup. So I do.

 

[Praxinoscope]

A lot of my sailing is now pure coastal so I know the area of by heart, on the occasional longer passages I use the chart as the main navigation aI, but have a chart plotter that I can refer to, the chart plotter is also fed from the AIS so approaching AIS transmitting vessels can be plotted, the GPS also feeds the VHF.

 

[benjenbav]

Quoting from ThomsonReuters Practical Law:

Negligence is: ‘Any act or omission which falls short of the standard to be expected of the "reasonable person". For a claim in negligence to succeed, it is necessary to establish that a duty of care was owed by the defendant to the claimant, that the duty was breached, that the claimant's loss was caused by the breach of duty and that the loss fell within the defendant's scope of duty and was a foreseeable consequence of the breach of duty.’

Hence, if you crash your boat and injure your passengers as a consequence of a navigational error you might expect a civil claim to be brought against you. If you had chosen not to avail yourself of technology that might have helped avoid the crash, that choice might well form part of the case against you.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

A lot of my sailing is now pure coastal so I know the area of by heart, on the occasional longer passages I use the chart as the main navigation aI, but have a chart plotter that I can refer to, the chart plotter is also fed from the AIS so approaching AIS transmitting vessels can be plotted, the GPS also feeds the VHF.

In fact, a plotter is more useful with what we might term pilotage rather than navigation. Short tacking against a tide in the shallow water, entering a strange port in poor vis, or low water. I guess we all spend more time in our home waters, I know the Solent pretty well, tide eddys, outfalls, islolated hazards, certainly the western part.

 

[Adios]

Quoting from ThomsonReuters Practical Law:

Negligence is: ‘Any act or omission which falls short of the standard to be expected of the "reasonable person". For a claim in negligence to succeed, it is necessary to establish that a duty of care was owed by the defendant to the claimant, that the duty was breached, that the claimant's loss was caused by the breach of duty and that the loss fell within the defendant's scope of duty and was a foreseeable consequence of the breach of duty.’

Hence, if you crash your boat and injure your passengers as a consequence of a navigational error you might expect a civil claim to be brought against you. If you had chosen not to avail yourself of technology that might have helped avoid the crash, that choice might well form part of the case against you.

Now thats making my concerns seem less far fetched. I guess the tipping point will be when everyone has a chart plotter and it is seen as completely standard basic equipment. Which is about now probably. An expert for the prosecution could make a case.

Still of course i'd be using other recognised ways of position finding and as I've said if i need to there is a GPS option. And its not like there will be a situation where the survivor will testify "and even though we were in a fog bank the skipper refused to use the GPS shouting "Tom Cunliffe didn't need one!!!!!"

 

[dunedin]

Now thats making my concerns seem less far fetched. I guess the tipping point will be when everyone has a chart plotter and it is seen as completely standard basic equipment. Which is about now probably. An expert for the prosecution could make a case.

Still of course i'd be using other recognised ways of position finding and as I've said if i need to there is a GPS option. And its not like there will be a situation where the survivor will testify "and even though we were in a fog bank the skipper refused to use the GPS shouting "Tom Cunliffe didn't need one!!!!!"

Each to their own, but sailing in coastal but rocky waters I find voyaging more pleasurable and less stressful with a chart plotter (actually 2, one at chart table and one at helm, plus 3 mobile devices used for in pub route planning and/or backup).
I also like paper charts, and refer to for route planning and spotting isolated rocks. But almost never plot a position on one (Think last time was 5 years ago mid North Sea)

 

[srm]

I don't know how many cruising leisure skippers/owners there are in UK waters, but would guess many thousands, if not tens of thousands.

Before retiring I used to read the MAIB reports when published, as some provided useful case studies for the courses I ran. I do not have figures but from memory there were many fishing vessel incidents and quite a lot involving merchant vessels. A lot less in the commercial/leisure sector and less still involving non-commercial leisure craft.

As I said in an earlier post:
"We are all free to make our own choices, but the bottom line is to keep crew and vessel safe."
Provided that you are confident that you can do that you have nothing to worry about.

 

[westernman]

Now thats making my concerns seem less far fetched. I guess the tipping point will be when everyone has a chart plotter and it is seen as completely standard basic equipment. Which is about now probably. An expert for the prosecution could make a case.

Still of course i'd be using other recognised ways of position finding and as I've said if i need to there is a GPS option. And its not like there will be a situation where the survivor will testify "and even though we were in a fog bank the skipper refused to use the GPS shouting "Tom Cunliffe didn't need one!!!!!"

So you never take any body in your car, because there are SUVs which are bigger, heavier and have better crash survivability statistics. A SUV should be standard basic equipment to venture out for the school run. (Actually it already is in many places).

 

[srm]

I also like paper charts, and refer to for route planning and spotting isolated rocks.

Very wise, I know of at least one isolated rock in a West Coast anchorage that is on old paper products but not on digital charts or the chart in a popular pilot book produced using digital charts. Fortunately, it was just outside my swinging circle and only spotted when looking back having climbed a hill.

 

[dunedin]

Very wise, I know of at least one isolated rock in a West Coast anchorage that is on old paper products but not on digital charts or the chart in a popular pilot book produced using digital charts. Fortunately, it was just outside my swinging circle and only spotted when looking back having climbed a hill.

Yes but UKHO paper charts aren’t always - or even generally - more accurate in the pilot guides.
There is one shoal and rock still shown in one of the busiest boating routes in Scotland, the Sound of Mull, that Antares has shown many years ago simply doesn’t exist. Took a while to risk going straight over the indicated rock (on a calm day with 3 pm HoT) and yes more than 20m in the area. But UKHO won’t update.

 

[glynd]

Ensure you have a properly fitted, effective radar reflector.....

 

[boomerangben]

I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. There are lots of different sizes and types of boats represented here, with skippers and crews with a multitude of backgrounds and motivations. Providing you get safely from a to b, it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you aren’t ignorant of what you are doing. For some, it’s seems that they get a great deal of fun and satisfaction navigating using paper, pencils and dividers, others get their kicks out of screens, data and gadgets

Quoting from ThomsonReuters Practical Law:

Negligence is: ‘Any act or omission which falls short of the standard to be expected of the "reasonable person". For a claim in negligence to succeed, it is necessary to establish that a duty of care was owed by the defendant to the claimant, that the duty was breached, that the claimant's loss was caused by the breach of duty and that the loss fell within the defendant's scope of duty and was a foreseeable consequence of the breach of duty.’

Hence, if you crash your boat and injure your passengers as a consequence of a navigational error you might expect a civil claim to be brought against you. If you had chosen not to avail yourself of technology that might have helped avoid the crash, that choice might well form part of the case against you.

I don’t have a chart plotter or the means to power it. I have used them in the past so do plotters still not say “not to be used for navigation” or other some such warning on start up? If so, could you be held negligent if you ran up on the “uncharted” rocks whilst using a chart plotter? I think (and I’m not a lawyer) that if you can as a defendant provide evidence that you are a competent sailor, with minimal equipment (chart, compass etc) in line with RYA recommended practice (given the RYAs scepticism towards plotters in their theory training) be able to defend yourself in the case of misadventure. Or put it another way, I think it would be easy from what you post above to prove negligence if a skipper could not safely get to refuge following a power/plotter failure, thereby proving that tradition nav is sufficient

 

[TSB240]

I do have a classic magnetic compass for steering ???

I think this is the most critical piece of equipment that is vastly undervalued by many new generation chartplotter lemmings.
Teaching my Children and Grandchildren to use the compass has been an interesting and invaluable task.

They all have a natural affiliation for an electronic screen but have rapidly learned the value of a compass over a chartplotter.

A chartplotter is next to useless at slow or near stationary speeds for giving or showing a course to steer.
Every chartplotter gazer should try the experiment of travelling at sub 2 knots in a reliable direction without any external reference point or using a compass.

They may be surprised by their plotted track which in many cases will have involved a series of 360 degree pirouettes!

Navigation is the art of knowing where you going to be in the future and how you aim to get there.

A chartplotter just tells you where you are (hopefully with a good degree of accuracy)
It has very little idea which way the wind or tide is taking you.

As far as the legalities of not having one. Isn't the first screen that you have to acknowledge is " This equipment should not be used for navigation purpose!"

 

[scottie]

Each to their own, but sailing in coastal but rocky waters I find voyaging more pleasurable and less stressful with a chart plotter (actually 2, one at chart table and one at helm, plus 3 mobile devices used for in pub route planning and/or backup).
I also like paper charts, and refer to for route planning and spotting isolated rocks. But almost never plot a position on one (Think last time was 5 years ago mid North Sea)

You might be more likely to be criticised for doing your navigation prep in an alcoholic charged environment

 

[benjenbav]

I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. There are lots of different sizes and types of boats represented here, with skippers and crews with a multitude of backgrounds and motivations. Providing you get safely from a to b, it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you aren’t ignorant of what you are doing. For some, it’s seems that they get a great deal of fun and satisfaction navigating using paper, pencils and dividers, others get their kicks out of screens, data and gadgets

I don’t have a chart plotter or the means to power it. I have used them in the past so do plotters still not say “not to be used for navigation” or other some such warning on start up? If so, could you be held negligent if you ran up on the “uncharted” rocks whilst using a chart plotter? I think (and I’m not a lawyer) that if you can as a defendant provide evidence that you are a competent sailor, with minimal equipment (chart, compass etc) in line with RYA recommended practice (given the RYAs scepticism towards plotters in their theory training) be able to defend yourself in the case of misadventure. Or put it another way, I think it would be easy from what you post above to prove negligence if a skipper could not safely get to refuge following a power/plotter failure, thereby proving that tradition nav is sufficient

You’ll have noticed from the text I quoted that there are quite a few elements that all have to be present for a claim to succeed: someone has to suffer loss; someone else has to have a duty of care; failure to discharge that duty has to lead to the loss and the loss has to be foreseeable etc.

If you never crash, you’ll never have a negligence claim (in that arena, anyway).

On the other hand, if one does and someone suffers a loss as a consequence, there’s likely to be an investigation into competence in the relevant circumstances.