What Now Skip? If I Ruled the World

[oceanfroggie]

Proposed tazmanian rule XYZ123: little leisure boats playing should keep out of the way of commerce and shipping that's working for a living on the seas. Large Ship v leisure yacht or mobo, upto leisure boat to keep out of the way and ship should not have to alter course.

It's unsafe and plain nuts that a 100,000 ton ship should have to do anything to avoid small leisure traffic. How do effect this? well only extensive traffic separation schemes much like airways, rather than the limited TSSs at known hot spots. (ie lanes where shipping has priority)

If it's bigger give way!

 

[timbartlett]

If I remarked that "safe driving is dependent upon the attitudes and beliefs of individual drivers and cannot be assured by strict adherence to the Highway Code", I would anticipate your agreement.

And I would agree with you... up to a point.
But if you stretched that concept to the extent that individual drivers could choose to go the wrong way round roundabouts, or drive on the wrong side of the road in the face of oncoming traffic, I would disagree -- strongly.

That is not because there is anything wrong with driving on the right, per se: it works perfectly well in many other countries. But in the UK, we drive on the left and go clockwise round roundabouts, and we expect other people to do likewise.

I live in a rural area, in which many people (myself included) often drive in the middle of the road. It is perfectly safe to do so, until we meet an oncoming vehicle. At that point, we all revert to driving on the left. If we did not conform to that established pattern of behaviour, there would be either carnage or chaos!

Why is it so different to remark, in the maritime context, that "safe navigation is dependent upon the attitudes and beliefs of individual helmsmen and cannot be assured by strict adherence to Colregs"?

I presume we are back on Rule 17 again?.

When two vessels meet, in most cases the rules lead us to expect one to give way, and the other to stand on. It is when one of the two arbitrarily decides to do something unexpected that the situation becomes dangerous -- akin to someone arbitrarily deciding that it would be nice to drive on the right today.

Standing on when you are the stand-on vessel is not a question of slavishly following a rule for its own sake. It is a matter of conforming to an established pattern of behaviour so that both vessels in the encounter know what to expect of the other.

The fact that many small recreational craft avoid collisions by "giving way" when they should stand on -- particularly when "giving way" involves altering course to port -- is mostly due to a combination of manoeuvrability, luck, and good seamanship on the part of the other vessel. They survive in spite of disregarding the rules -- not because they disregard the rules.

In the context of the imaginary world of the WNS discussion, if we want to rewrite the rules so that there is no stand-on rule, we could do so. My suggested Rule 5(ii) was exactly that. But it doesn't seem to have met with much support, nor (unless I've missed something) has anyone suggested a workable alternative.

 

[timbartlett]

Proposed tazmanian rule XYZ123: little leisure boats playing should keep out of the way of commerce and shipping that's working for a living on the seas.

See my posts of 10-11-09 12:31 and 09-11-09 15:42

On a selfish note, I would love to include a tonnage rule or a pro-am rule in my proposed feature (much more interesting than "let's stick with what we've got") but I honestly don't see how it would work. I'm counting on those who advocate it to give me some help, here!

It's unsafe and plain nuts that a 100,000 ton ship should have to do anything to avoid small leisure traffic.

I can't guarantee these figures, but I would be surprised if there are more than about 150-200 ships of more than 100,000 tons in the world. And in open waters, I really don't see anything "unsafe and plain nuts" about requiring them to conform to the same rules as everyone else -- after all, they do so at the moment.

But I say again:-

On a selfish note, I would love to include a tonnage rule or a pro-am rule in my proposed feature etc.etc.

The only proviso is that it should be practical. That means it needs to work for the mundane meetings between 15m motor yachts and "licensed to carry not more than 12 persons" passenger ferries, as well as for the headline-making special cases. In particular, I suggest that it needs to address the problem of how to identify a vessel's pro-am status or size

How do effect this? well only extensive traffic separation schemes much like airways, rather than the limited TSSs at known hot spots. (ie lanes where shipping has priority)

I'm not an aviation expert, but I was under the impression that controlled airspace was pretty limited, and pretty much confined to the approaches to major airports. Even there, light aircraft are able to go round it, over it, or (in places) under it. It would be kinda difficult to for boats to go over or under a Traffic Separation Scheme -- so would you go for designated crossing points, or would you ban all recreational traffic from crossing the Channel, the North-sea, and the Celtic sea, or allow crossing only after obtaining permission from someone?