Shipping Lane Stories. Real life experiences?

Racing the Link Cup from Calais to Dover. As we entered the TSS the fog came down. High prssure radiation with plenty of breeze so we were going fast.. Crossed the NE lane without anything to report. But the SW lane was different. We began to hear fog horns... five of them two ahead to port, three astern to all to port so soming our way.

First officer on the VHF to Dover CG who gave her the position, couse speed of all five ships.. Whichever way we went we were going to get close to one of them.. Out of the gloom I saw a funnel Head. . My heart jumped then I realised we would pass astern. Looking to Starboard, I saw a bow........

Gently reach down and start the donk and spin round on a sixpence without even letting go the genny... We bought a radar after that one..
 
I had dropped Swmbo off at Nante airport at the end of July 2009, returned the hire car and faced a singled handed voyage back home to Gosport from Redon in Brittany. The longed-for heatwave arrived as soon as I headed down the non tidal River Vilaine towards the sea lock at Arzal 26 miles away. Just three miles into my delivery trip home a temping jetty beckoned and I experienced a rural canal side lifestyle for 3 nights. It was a good way to meet the locals including the herd of Breton cows that peered through the galley porthole, all 6 coach-roof windows were open to keep the cabin cooler in the heatwave.

Four day-sails westward along the southern Brittany coast got me to Camaret and my jump off point for the English Coast.
Strong winds kept me on a buoy for 2 nights, the winds also explain why I headed off with only 10 hours of fuel left as I had deemed the fuel pontoon at Camaret was too tricky for a singlehander in the cross winds.

Progress home was slow as I conserved fuel and by sunrise on the second morning the notion of ducking into Alderney for a sleep was tempting after a slow night tracking along the north Breton coast in order to keep inshore of the traffic traversing from the Casquets to Ushant. Then the sun climbed, the breeze freshened, caffeine flowed, the monochrome seascape tured vibrant blue and my racer/cruiser started romping home to the Solent.

I rigged a preventer on the boom as I broadreached my way north across the first east going shipping lane on a port tack.

By 1 PM I thought the shipping lanes were behind before AIS alerted me to a possy of 6 ships heading west for a close encounter. I was tired and wanted get home and so was not prepared to loiter while the group passed ahead of me. I picked my gap between the 1st and 2nd ship instead of threading my way past the trailing 4 that were spread out and slowly catching my second ship.

1200 rmp and a 20 degree turn to port gave me a satisfying increase from 0.2 to 0.7NM CPA on the AIS display passing ahead of ship number two. Things felt so comfortable over the next 15 minutes I started to consider the predicament of the yacht behind that had been catching up running under its spinnaker.

I now believe the spinnaker explains the horribleness of the next 4 minutes.

Sitting in the the cockpit dead ahead of the ship I was estimating how close the spinnaker powered yacht was to being run down. My mental trigonometry reasoned that with 1,000m from me to the bow the ship and with the yacht 300m behind me, given an assumed 3 to 1 ratio in speed I reckoned they were in serious trouble. Someone on the bridge of the ship thought so too.

At that point the ship visibly heeled over to port and swerved starboard into my projected path. CPA plummeted from 0.7 to nothing plus or minus the length of the boom. Gunning the throttle to 2700 rpm indicated the helm of that ship was focused on increasing his turn to avoid the other yacht as my zero CPA remained stubbornly zero despite my increased boat speed. I was beginning to think the picture taken of my final demise from the other yacht should make it into Yachting Monthly.

Those in the YBW lounge who have been subject to my politics for the last 7 years will have guessed I survived. At the last moment, about 3 minutes into panic-stations the heel on the ship reversed, as its helm was spun to the opposite lock and the ship slid past between we two yachts.

In retrospect the dozy lookout on the ship had been blinded by the early afternoon sun glinting off the sea to port and only at the last minute he picked up the spinnaker, swerved and then saw me me a couple of minutes later, hence swerve no.2.

“It was my righthand turn at 15 mins to CPA what dun-it” I can hear you lot thinking. I think not having replayed the whole saga many times. Had I maintained my original course I would have been 200m away just to starboard of the ship’s bow and in the firing line as the ship swerved to avoid the other yacht. Could the ship have fully appraised the whole scenario by the point I made my turn to port and had an solid alternative collision avoidance plan that was scuppered by my turn? Hmm 7 years later I have not been able to extrapolate what it might have been.
 
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One more from me. In case I look to be incident prone remember please we did multiple Channel crossings every year for 40 years in all conditions, in many different boats, some without radar, some with, all back then without AIS.

OK so this time we had radar, an old style CRT set with look down tube, but it worked. We were southbound out of Dartmouth headed for Ushant and saw a weird target dead ahead at about 7mls plus range, apparently stationary relative to ourselves. I decided to hold our course until we could properly ascertain the targets movements. We were at the time new to radar. The target looked like an island where none should be. At about 3mls IIRC weturned west to pass whatever it was by. about then the VHF sprang to life, calling a vessel in position xyz, ( not us) from eastbound 'tug and tow' in position zyx' but gave a longitude 'east' Even at 3am and tired I thought that is nowhere near us, then realised if east was right we would be well out of hisVHF range, bugger he meant to say 'west'!! .... At this point I yelled to SWMBO at the wheel ( our radar was at the chart table) to do an immediate 180' and go north out of the way. As she turned SWMBO saw the lights of the tug ahead. Once established we were well clear I called the tug and explained we were the small boat now north of him and had we caused a problem to which he replied, no, but we have two more we need to deal with, so we left him to it. Afterwards and having heard subsequent transmissions from it we realised the tug had it's tow on a shear, not dead astern and our radar was seeing the entire caboodle as an 'island' as the radar beam width saw the tug and it's tow as being one wide object and deep too because the tow was on i'ts stbd quarter, This incident was about 15 miles east of the busy Ushant TSS. and shortly after, the tug started giving out very regular position reports and warnings, as did USHant Traffic Control
 
Last time I crossed the Casquets TSS we arrived pointed the boat at 90 degrees to the TSS and crossed. Watched some big ships pass and exited TSS and went and had a beer on Alderney.

Coming back we had thick fog until about an hour before we entered the TSS where we watched lots of lights move back and fore.

It is the fishing boats that move about in odd directions that is the real worry. For real worry its the kite surfers that scare the sh one t out of me.
 
We crossed from Portsmouth to Cherbourg and back in July as part of our annual cruise.

The outbound leg was fairly uneventful. The visibility was good and the wind almost none existent so we were motoring, we have both an AIS transmitter/ receiver and radar, but given the good vis, the radar was not in use. The crossing of the eastbound shipping lane only threw up one challenging target which the AIS said we would past close behind; however, as a precaution, we called him up on CH16. He answered almost immediately and we confirmed who we were and, being the give way vessel, would pass his stern. He seemed grateful for the call, one got the impression anything to break the boredom was welcome!

The return was made in similar conditions and again went without incident until we were crossing the eastbound lane. There were several vessels in sight on our port side, but one, a tanker called "Atomic" was worrying as the AIS was showing we would cross slightly ahead and this time we were the stand on vessel. We tried calling him several times to seek assurance that he had us in sight. We called on Ch16, Ch12 and even made an MMSI call but none were answered. By this time we were fairly close and it became clear that we would pass at least a half a mile ahead so we continued our course and speed.

I have no idea whether he saw or heard us and simply chose to ignore us, or whether there was simply nobody on the bridge. I have just looked up the vessel on Marine Traffic and it is now showing "Decommissioned or Lost" and one can draw one's own conclusions from this regarding the likelihood of such a ship nearing the end of its life having a crack crew!
 
john_morris_uk said:
I think the important thing to understand that this is one incident in many many crossings. Mostly ships obey the rules. (It's in their interest to as running yachts down is not career enhancing.)
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. . . . yes. Especially vessels in the first of a pair of lanes. They're very well behaved. They're coming from port, and know (or should know!) to give way to all crossing traffic coming from starboard. Your event was quite exceptional in my experience.

Those in the second lane of a pair are coming from starboard. They expect radar returns from port to give way; that they are stand-on vessels. This lasts until (or if) they learn the vessel from port is under sail. Which doesn't occur without AIS in visibility under - well put your own figure on this - my guess is 3nm to 5nm.

Like you, I've made a few hundred channel crossings, with about 10% in lower visibility. Most of that sailing was in vessels without AIS or radar (or even without VHF up to 1965!)

Unlike you, I've never had a shock caused by a vessel coming from port. They've all passed clear astern, or well ahead. Of course, you don't know if you've forced a course change when vis is 5nm or less. In better vis, most course alterations took place about 15 minutes before passing - so - around 3nm for slower vessels and 5nm for 20kt jobs I guess.

I've had three frighteningly close encounters with vessels coming from starboard, two at night, and one by day.

Two near misses were in vis below 5nm when I wasn't on deck. By the time the watchkeeper called me, there was nothing to be done except to turn hard to port, start the engine and shout "all on deck!". Without action, we'd have T-boned a few thousand tons of steel close to the stern. As it was, we kept a good 100m clear - half a minute's sailing time. Ooops. The other was potentially more dangerous - we were tracking for the bow - but took the same action a couple of minutes earlier and paralleled the vessel about 300 m off and watched it pass

The third was a night near miss in good visibility. She was a long vessel with a rear bridge. We'd tracked her as just going ahead of us, so, to be sure, we altered starboard about 20 degrees. Stoopid. At this time she altered course to port. We earned 5 blasts, followed by 2 blasts. She was right. We should have kept course and speed . . . but we didn't know whether or not she'd identified us as sail, and 2 nm is a bit close when it's a wall of steel vs a tub of plastic.

Ever since then, to avoid uncertainty as to whether we're "identified" as sail or power, I've always crossed oncoming starboard traffic lanes lanes under engine, cone up, jib rolled, motoring light on. Give way to the red light . . . wonderfully intuitive.
 
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There are shipping lanes in the western approach to the North Channel. I have never seen a commercial vessel in them, let alone enough density of traffic to justify their existence.
 
JumbleDuck said:
There are shipping lanes in the western approach to the North Channel. I have never seen a commercial vessel in them, let alone enough density of traffic to justify their existence.
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You get one or two, occasionally. For some reason I've typically encountered very slow moving bulk carriers. World of difference compared to the Channel or Off Ushant TSSes.
 
Had a bit of a panic on passage from St Mary's to St Peter Port one night. I was well asleep with wife on watch when she woke me up to say there were big ships both sides of us, all heading approximately south west. That was indeed the case, there were quite a lot of them, all strung out SW of Casquettes TSS, some had altered course to pass astern of us but some hadn't. Soon sorted to pass astern of the closest on our starboard side then back to bunk but must admit it was very unnerving at first glance when going up top.
 
Graham376 reminds me of another similar but somewhat funnier incident.

We were on passage from Dartmouth to Chenal du Four, approaching the 'lanes' area east of Ushant TSS and SWMbO was on watch whilst I slept below. I could see the radar from my sleeping bunk and would open an eye periodically to look that way. We had an excellent Furuno 1830 CRT set with a large screen and had it set to 'plot,' as in show shadow trails of targets, which allowed a quick check of which were clear, which clearing and which to plot properly as they might get close. No AIS back then. SWMBO shouts 'SHARKS!!' and I woke with a bang, opened gob and said don't be sill or similar. To which she added 'there is one the size of the boat alongside right now' which probably had me sddan expletive or two. So she knew what to do, slipped below and turned the 'plot function off on the radar. Next time i opened an eye to scan rhe screen I could see targets everywhere but had no quick resolution of which were well clear or which needed watching. IT had the desired result and I was up on deck double quick, no sharks now to see mind. When many hours later we reached Camaret, others that had crossed that night said 'did you see those huge sharks out near the lanes? It seems there were groups of massive basking sharks out that night. She still brings that incident up from time to time to remind me who is boss.... :redface-new:
 
We were sailing down the English Channel outside the shipping lane west to east on our way back from the Caribbean. There were lots of ships also outside the shipping lane coming towards us and every ship closing turned to avoid us much to my surprise.
 
I had a ship, the Gardsea, Norwegian flag, nearly hit me.
We watched him coming from 5 miles away, we hauling gear. As we progress along the string he just kept straight for us although we were hauling out of his way. In the end the end weight came fast and rather than charge about to free it, as he was very close we waited. We veered slightly from side to side as the swell passed, so did he, until we had to scoot from under his bow, once we could decide which way to go. When I challenged him, politely, he said I made many changes of course, I pointed out my shapes and him being astern etc he should have kept clear. No reply. Called CG to report him , he turned round and came back. I cut the gear and headed for shoal water, at the same time telling the CG on 16 what he was doing. He stopped. So did we. after twenty minutes he turned way, but on a different course from before , heading up channel rather than for falmouth. I submitted a report but heard no more.
 
when i was oyster fishing at calshot----edge of southampton water--- i would tie up in cowes for the night to save the journey back and forward to portsmouth----woke up one morning to thick fog--by 11oc it hadn t cleared and i was loosing a days work so i set out at half speed---the boat kept a good straight line and every minute i would walk up to the bows give a good blast with my large hand pumped fog horn ---then listen----half way across the shipping channel heard a loud fog horn---couldn t work out where it was coming from so carried on---suddenly out of the fog i saw the ship stopped in the water---i crossed 100yds ahead----the picture is still fixed in my mind---it was either the sir lancelot or the sir galahad----the sir galahad was hit in the falklands war
 
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