That sailing boat cargo boat collision on Southampton Water

[prv]

What do you expect to see in a report ?

raggie sails in front of a ship which is clearly restricted in ability to avoid hitting it.

Mostly, why they were there.

All the talk of them recklessly thinking they could just make it is ill-informed - they were racing, and they forfeited the race the moment they went inside the "box" (the 1000m Moving Prohibited Zone). So what were they thinking?

(Note I'm not looking for further speculation here - we had quite enough of that at the time. I wanted to see what the MAIB thought after talking to those involved.)

I guess it's true that there isn't enough meat for a full MAIB report, but they do also do brief summary type notices and I kind of expected one of those at least.

Pete

 

[l'escargot]

What do you expect to see in a report ?

raggie sails in front of a ship which is clearly restricted in ability to avoid hitting it.

Do VTS have the power to fine the idiot ? all he has to say is something jammed and he will get away with it leaving all the other plonkers thinking they too can sail in front of a ship, it is probably best left, the boat suffered adequate damage, I would say lesson well learnt !

Otherwise all I can see coming out of an investigation is the banning of sail alone in the shipping channels, compulsory use of engines and crossing at 90 degrees is most likely outcome.

If it was that simple I think it would have been done and dusted a year ago - clearly the authorities concerned consider it was more complicated than your assessment. We will have to wait and see won't we?

 

[DAKA]

If it was that simple I think it would have been done and dusted a year ago - clearly the authorities concerned consider it was more complicated than your assessment. We will have to wait and see won't we?

Well sailing in harbours has already been banned in a lot of places, the only complication in this case is Cowes and Cowes week otherwise I agree that it would have already been done.

You would think the solent is wide enough for the race organisers not to put the course across the channel, IMHO its the same old story, too many raggies are brought up from birth to only recognise power gives way to sail , the senile numpties seem to revert back and still believe it when they are 70 and planning a race course

 

[dt4134]

I've not seen that clip before. Albeit it is poorer quality than the one VicS posted it does show that they were having difficulty trimming the spinnaker much earlier in the sequence. Makes you wonder why they didn't bear off earlier and leave the ship to starboard. Probably more to it than appears at first.



PS apologies for making a serious post on a trolling thread

 

[l'escargot]

Well sailing in harbours has already been banned in a lot of places, the only complication in this case is Cowes and Cowes week otherwise I agree that it would have already been done.

You would think the solent is wide enough for the race organisers not to put the course across the channel, IMHO its the same old story, too many raggies are brought up from birth to only recognise power gives way to sail , the senile numpties seem to revert back and still believe it when they are 70 and planning a race course

No it will never happen, banning of sail alone in the shipping channels, otherwise any sailing boat without an engine based in East Cowes would have to sail around the island to get to Cowes or if they wanted to sail to the mainland would have to go out and round the Nab first - it's the only way they could avoid sailing in a shipping channel.

If you think that was a "power give way to sail" or stand on situation you don't understand what's going on or are just trolling.

Name some of these harbours where sailing has been banned...

 

[l'escargot]

...Probably more to it than appears at first...

Something that has never been explained are the actions of the escort boat. They go alongside and talk to the sailing boat, then cross the bows of the ship and head off towards the stern. I don't believe that is the action they would have taken if they believed a collision was imminent or unavoidable. They are not usually hesitant in instructing small boats when they get in the way and I think if they thought there was likely to be a collision they would have stood off ready to pick up the pieces. I certainly don't think that they would have headed off into the distance.

There are also suggestions that the ship indicated that it was going to perform a manoeuvre and then didn't which may have thrown in some confusion - causing the sailing boat to put itself somewhere it subsequently didn't want to be. A bit like when you pull out of a side road when a car indicates it's turning in, then it doesn't.

There was plenty of speculation at the time, pages and pages of it, but there is no way that a racing crew just stood on expecting that the ship would give way to them, they sailed themselves into disqualification without the collision and would have known it. Somehow they ended up where they didn't want to be and weren't able to get themselves away - I think the fact that the report has taken so long to come out indicates things weren't straightforward. I don't subscribe to the theory that the crew are influential enough to cover things up, if anything I would think it more likely that others involved would rather play down their part. We shall have to wait and see.

 

[dt4134]

There are also suggestions that the ship indicated that it was going to perform a manoeuvre and then didn't which may have thrown in some confusion - causing the sailing boat to put itself somewhere it subsequently didn't want to be. A bit like when you pull out of a side road when a car indicates it's turning in, then it doesn't.

That's interesting. The video shows the ship continuing its turn into the Thorn Channel aftr the collision. I guess there was the usual jink to port before the turn to starboard, so maybe the sound signals for that caused confusion.

There was plenty of speculation at the time, pages and pages of it, but there is no way that a racing crew just stood on expecting that the ship would give way to them, they sailed themselves into disqualification without the collision and would have known it. Somehow they ended up where they didn't want to be and weren't able to get themselves away - I think the fact that the report has taken so long to come out indicates things weren't straightforward.

I agree. YBW is mainly for cruisers and mobo-ers (trolling or otherwise) but in reality you need to be pretty well organised to race so I always expected there was more to it than their just being numpties.

That said, the owner of a boat I was on a few years ago just tacked onto a ship without cause. It was totally irrational as there was no way tactically we wanted to be anywhere near the bit of water the ship wanted to use and I'd already explained that at the start of the beat. Nowhere near a collision but by the time I'd persuaded him to tack back not only had we been hooted but we'd lost the lead. So silly things do happen.