Learning the "Rules of the Road"

 

     Or, "A collision at sea can ruin your entire day.”

In a great practical joke aboard the USS Buck, that fictive quote appeared
 on a bulletin board, attributed to Thucydides, a writer from ancient Greece!

 I’ve kind of been avoiding this topic because it’s so complex, but newer sailors need to know what the rules are, where they came from and how they apply to them. I’ve found a great website that does an excellent job of explaining what these rules mean, and that’s what you need. Many of us read a law and think we know what it means when we don’t. Maritime rules are complex, and one rule affects another, and one has more prominence in one situation than another, so understanding what the rules mean can be tricky.

For instance, although you’ll hear “right of way” – as in, “I had the right of way!” all the time, that’s a driving concept that doesn’t work on water. On the water, instead of “right of way” you have the “stand on” vessel and the “give way” vessel. The “stand on” vessel is expected to hold its course, while the “give way” boat has to take certain actions specifically to avoid a collision.

All of these rules are designed to avoid collisions. But since there are no highways on the water, no lane markings, no traffic lights – and because boats don’t have brakes – it gets complicated.

The formal name of these rules is “The 1972 International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea," but mercifully that's been  reduced to “COLREGS.” The COLREGS cover virtually any situation you could face while sailing in the vicinity of other boats, but they are complicated, and written in legal style, which unfortunately means they are easily misinterpreted when people without a legal background read them.

Enter the “Handbook of the Nautical Rules of the Road,” which answers all the questions and translates the “leagalease” into everyday language that non-lawyers can understand and use to be a better and safer sailor. Written by Chris Llana and George Wisneskey, this book is online – for free – at this website:

http://navruleshandbook.com/index.html

For instance, there’s Rule 5, on keeping a lookout. Here’s what the rule says:

“International : Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper lookout by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate in the prevailing circumstances and conditions so as to make a full appraisal of the situation and of the risk of collision.” (Sometimes the rules change slightly for inland sailing, but this book explains that too.)

What does that really mean to a sailor? In the online book I'm recommending, that one paragraph is followed by an extensive but very clear explanation of the practical meaning of the rule. By “extensive,” I mean just under 2,400 words just explaining what it means to be a "lookout."

Is that too much for you? Too bad – really. You’ve chosen to sail, and you need to know the rules. Llana and Wisneskey make it an easy read. That’s the good news. Mind you, the 2,400 words I just described only apply in open water. If the other vessel is a freighter in a narrow channel, such as we see in Tampa Bay, well .. that’s a different rule. But no worries, this book explains that, too. This book explains it all. For free!

The bad news is that there are seven rules just in that section of the COLREGS. But really – this book is so well written that you will know exactly what is expected from you.

It will take a while to read it all, and absorb it all, and I suggest you read this book twice. The first time is right now. Then after you’ve been sailing for another six months or so, read it again, and you’ll realize “Oh yeah, there was that time …” and you’ll begin to see how the COLREGS apply to your day-to-day sailing.

A word of caution, though: the word “COLREGS” brings a state of mind in some people that could quite fairly be labeled “obnoxious.” There are a good number of sailors out there who have read the COLREGS, are certain they know what they mean, and will not hesitate to give you a very hard time if you don’t agree with them. You know how your mother told you not to talk about religion, politics, or your personal finances at a party? I would add to that, don’t try to discuss COLREGS with another sailor unless you know him or her well. 

Self-appointed experts are everywhere, and they can be quite aggressive about pushing their point of view. In my most recent experience with this, several people tried to set me straight. As it turned out, they were wrong, because they didn't understand the nuances hidden in the rules. These self-appointed experts are often wrong and they will do you no good service. Be polite, nod your head, say something neutral and change the subject. Knowing and understanding COLREGS is important – important enough that you should find out for yourself.

One more thing about that “right of way” phrase: if the worst should happen and you are in a collision with another boat on the water, you will find that a maritime judge will give some measure of blame to both parties (even if it's 99% blame to one party and 1% to the other), because the overriding rule, the one that is the basis for all the others, is “Do everything possible to avoid a collision.” While the COLREGS don’t specifically state that you should, for instance, deliberately run your boat aground to avoid a collision, it might be the best choice at that moment.

You have to read these rules, digest them, get some experience and come back to them, then get more experience and come back to them again. But don’t just read the rules. Read the very clear explanations in Llana and Wisneskey’s book. There are other books out there, but this one is very good – and the price is right!

Go to our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/boldlygosailing?skip_nax_wizard=true

Who IS Lee Shore, Anyway?

      Or, There is more than one way to sink a boat …

 

For the last few months, every time I crossed the Skyway Bridge traveling north, between the Skyway Bridge and the Meisner Bridge I would see this boat aground on the east side. 

The first time I saw her, she still had both sails. Then about three weeks ago, the sails were gone.

Then two weekends ago, we had a big blow-up of a storm. It formed in the center of the state, and for some reason no sea breeze formed from the west to stop its movement, and it moved right over the greater Tampa Bay area. It was a  big storm with steady winds of over 40 mph and gusts higher.

Because this boat was on the east side of the highway, when the storm came in from the east, the boat was on the lee shore. 

 

 It gets confusing. If I were talking about an uninhabited desert island, the WEST side would have been the lee side of the island, because the weather was coming from the East. But in boating, “lee shore” has a different meaning. It means that your boat is between the wind and land. The lee shore is on the lee side of your boat. The geography of the land no longer matters in this terminology.

So this little boat (about 25’ is my guess) was aground on a lee shore for the storm we had that Sunday. If this boat had been aground on the West side of the highway she would have been somewhat safer.

Earlier in this blog I told about the man who fell asleep on the beach, and when the wind shifted, his boat was anchored on a lee shore. The wind blew his boat to the shallows and then the waves banged it up and down on the sand until the keel finally came through the bottom of the boat.

I was tempted, but I did not wade out to this boat to see if the keel was now inside the boat.  But I did drive by her again after the storm, and found her more severely aground (no surprise). I also found boat parts on the beach (not a surprise either – I’m surprised she held up as well as she did.)

 

The galley sink, now on the beach

What does this have to do with you? It’s bad enough to run aground, but if you run aground on a falling tide, you may want to consider calling a towboat as one of your first strategies. Keep working things and trying to get off the grounding, but the lower the tide gets, the harder it will be to get your boat freed safely. If you have to wait to get her off, you might want to consider staying with her. It can be uncomfortable, but your grounded boat might make a tempting target, an easy wade away for someone with sticky fingers.

Which leads me to my next comment: I drove over the bridge again a couple of days ago, and looked at this boat.  Both the mast and the boom were gone along with all the shrouds and stays. It’s possible that the owner has been coming back to get sails, and the mast, etc. (I hope he finds his sink on the beach), but gone is gone.

This is terrible for the boat, and terrible for the boat owner, who probably did not have towing insurance. He or she is also likely to get a fat bill from whichever county that stretch of land is in – the Skyway Bridge sits in three counties. So how do you keep this from happening to your boat?

First, study a paper chart of the area you will be sailing. Don’t rely only on a chart plotter. Except for very expensive ones, they have small screens, and dangerous shallows could be just off the edge of your screen. Have some idea of where the shallow spots are so you know what to look for. 

 

Second, pay attention to the waters around you. In the photo above, see the light green spot of water apparently near the horizon? The water there is probably less than one foot deep at low tide. You can also see another very shallow spot off to starboard.  A change in color will often tip you off to shallow water. In addition, over shallow water there will sometimes be breaking waves, just as you see on a beach. Neither of these are foolproof, but it should remind you to take another look at where you are.

Third, get towing insurance. There’s a very good chance that a towboat could have gotten this boat off the grounding, and nothing bad would have happened to her. Even if they couldn’t get her off in a low tide, it most likely would have been pretty easy at the next high tide. She’s not a big boat.

Fourth, know several ways to get your boat off a grounding yourself. That’s a huge topic and too much for this blog entry, but you’ll see several approaches very well explained in SAILING FOR DUMMIES.

Fifth, have some creature comforts on your boat. If she doesn’t have a head, get a porta-potty. They work extremely well. Have a flashlight and a good book to read so you have something to do while you stay with your boat. Always carry extra food and water, even if it’s only a can of Dinty Moore Stew. Creative arranging of cushions can make spending the night on a grounded boat fairly comfy. 

I’ll have to tell you how I know on another day.

 Go to our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/boldlygosailing?skip_nax_wizard=true

DON’T FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR CHART PLOTTER

      Or, Where DO these channel markers come from, anyway?

"Not all who wander are lost." 

JRR Tolkien

 Last spring at the end of sail school, all the sail school students were invited for a sunset/evening sail on Boca Ciega Bay. I was one of the host boats, and took some delightful people out.

One man in the group in particular was interested in learning everything he possibly could on this sail. So he got a fair amount of time at the helm, with me by his side since this was his first time sailing a boat of this size. He did a great job, too. He was a fast learner and I’m sure he’s still learning all he can.

As we were going in, I showed him how the chart plotter displayed the red and green channel markers so accurately that you could use the chart plotter to guide you through in pea soup fog. He stared at the chart plotter, watching the little icon that indicated my boat.

As we approached the entrance of the channel, he spotted the red marker on the chart plotter and stared at it intently. He had already heard about “Red right returning,” meaning to keep the red markers to the starboard of side of the boat when returning through an access channel.

And he was, indeed, approaching the channel with the red marker on the starboard side of the image of my boat on the chart plotter.

The problem was that he was not paying any attention to where the green marker was, and it’s a narrow channel.

So as we approached, I said to him, “Where’s the green marker?” He pointed it out on the chart plotter, not realizing that unless we changed course, and soon, we would hit that green channel marker. I took the wheel and pulled it to starboard, and then he saw what I was talking about. He saw it on the water first, and it made him gasp.

I told him – “Don’t fall in love with your chart plotter. Make sure you visually spot what you’re seeing on the screen."

The electronic gear can be fascinating. It’s kind of cool to watch how the depth changes as your depth sounder reads it. You soon learn that the ocean bottom is nothing like a road on land. Water depth can vary a lot in a very short distance. As long as your keel doesn’t touch any of it, it doesn’t matter, but it is interesting to observe.

Unfortunately we may (may, the inquiry hasn’t been done yet) have recently seen a case of what I call “electronics hypnosis” with tragic results out in the Seattle area. A 25’ sailboat and a very large, very fast ferry were on a collision course. They did collide, and although the man single-handing the sailboat survived, his sailboat is now at the bottom of a channel. We don’t know yet what happened except for one thing the sailboat skipper admitted to: he had recently been in some fog, and was focused on his radar screen.

He made a poor choice, choosing a channel that commercial ferries use at high rates of speed to double-check his electronics.

C’mon. We all know that the electronics tools are more than “gadgets” and can give us crucial information, but when you put a new one on your boat, get yourself out into open water before exploring it. Even then, set a kitchen timer to ring every two minutes so you can look around and make sure some boat isn’t gaining on you, on a collision course.

In fact, while you’re out there exploring your new chart plotter or whatever you got, take the time to explore it thoroughly, so when you are in heavy traffic you’ll only have to give it a quick glance. You wouldn’t drive down the road with your eyes intently focused on your rear view mirror, and you should use your electronics in the same way. If you need to dig through menus, make sure there’s no one around you, and if you have someone on the boat with you, put them on 360º constant watch so you don’t have to worry about playing bumper cars with your boat because you’re not familiar with your chart plotter yet. Even if the area is clear of boats, you still have to watch out for things like crab traps and lobster pots, which can make a royal mess of your propeller.

Tell your chart plotter: “We’re friends. I respect and admire you, but that’s all we can be.”

Go to our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/boldlygosailing?skip_nax_wizard=true

Docking Single-Handed

     or, Always have a "Plan B!"
 

Believe it can be done!
(fortune cookie)

Earlier I talked about how to handle your boat by yourself if you need to.

Once you’ve sailed your boat back to your marina by yourself, you’re going to have to dock it. In an earlier entry, I proposed a scenario where your sailing companion has sprained his ankle and can’t help. If you have your slip set up for such an eventuality, that won’t be a problem.

First, you have to be very familiar with handling your boat under low speed. That can be tricky because the wind (and current, if any) will have more effect on where your boat goes. So, it’s a good thing to practice.

To bring your boat into the slip, you have to maintain enough speed to have steering, but you don’t want to come into the dock any faster than you're willing to hit it. So once you’ve turned into the slip, you no longer need speed for steering, and commonly, skippers put their boat into neutral and then into reverse (don’t just go from forward to reverse, skipping neutral.) Reverse is the closest thing you have to a brake when docking.

With two people, one person can be out of the cockpit with a boat hook to grab a line, but your companion is sitting with ice on his ankle. So here’s what you do.

Before you set sail, tie a long line on the piling at the far end of your slip. Stretch it out and decide what spot you want to use on your boat to temporarily hold it. At that spot on the line, make a figure-8 loop with a carabiner in it. Clip it on to the boat, and then

My docking line latched on to my toe rail 

secure it with  cleat hitch near the bow of the boat. Your goal is to have that carabiner or loop get tight and stop the boat before you hit what's in front of it.

Correctly tied cleat hitch

If you don’t have a toe rail, you can use a stanchion base, as this is a line used only temporarily for docking. Or, if you have a mid-cleat, instead of putting a carabiner in the figure-8 loop, make the loop big enough to slip over that cleat without a struggle.

So you come into the slip slowly, have the boat hook handy, grab that line, and attach it to your boat. Your boat is now quite safely secure, and you can take your time putting your permanent docking lines on. When you’re done, dis-attach your temporary docking line. It should be too tight to stay on the boat through tidal changes.

You will probably have to grab that double-ended docking line in your hands sometimes and pull the boat a little forward or a little back to get that loop or carabiner in the right place, but that’s not too hard to do.

On the other side of my slip, I also have a line from a middle piling going to the front dock at about a 45º angle, above the waterline. If the wind is from the north, it tends to blow my bow over toward the next boat. This diagonal line prevents my bow from swinging into the boat next to me.

By the way, you can be sure the fellow with the ice on his foot will be back-seat driving again, and it can be very distracting at a very stressful time. Tell him ahead of time what you’re going to do, and … of course … PRACTICE it before you need it. You may have to tell people at the dock that you’re practicing doing it by yourself, and you will still have a hard time keeping them from helping by grabbing the bow or something similar. Thank them for their help but explain that you’re practicing doing it single-handed.

And that brings up a final point: help is good. If any of those helpers live in the marina, it might be smart to have their phone numbers. If you come in single-handed while the marina is open, marina staff may be very willing to help you. I know they would here at Twin Dolphin. However, after hours if you call a marina resident, odds are he or she would be glad to come out and “catch your bow.”

Go to our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/boldlygosailing?skip_nax_wizard=true 

FOR THE SUNDANCER WHO "WAKED" ME

     Or, Money can’t buy happiness

To the guy with the beautiful black and white Sundancer:

Hi, Pal. I’m sorry it bothered you when I took your picture. It was the day after the Christmas Boat Parade, and I was trying to return to Bradenton, but there was just too much fog on Tampa Bay. I wasn’t about to try to cross a shipping channel in white-out fog, and I wasn’t going to attempt the Manatee River that way either.

So I turned around to go back to Boca Ciega Yacht Club.

I saw you there as I headed out, aground between Structure C and Structure E bridges. I knew you must be frustrated, but since there was a rising tide, I figured, “He’ll have a beer, break out the snacks, and be free soon enough.” It could have been so much worse.

But on my return trip, you were still there, but now with not one but TWO Boat US boats trying to pull you off. On a rising tide. All it would have taken was a little patience. “Where did you have to go so urgently?” I wondered. What was the rush?

I’m sorry, but that made a good photo. I didn’t have my camera handy, so I did take a picture with my phone.

You had no way of knowing the phone was going to commit telephone hara-kiri before I could get the picture off of it. That photo is gone forever.

But you didn’t know that. I went on my way at about 6 knots, through Structure C and then northeast up the end of Boca Ciega Bay back toward the club. Imagine how surprised I was to see you behind me when I was about two thirds of the way there!

Example of the boat that went after me not once but twice.

I was even more surprised when you revved up both engines and circled my boat, throwing it about 50º to port, and then 50º to starboard. Fortunately I had my cat in her carrier in the cockpit. I was able to grab it and protect her – but what if there had been children in the cabin? They would not have been able to reach the overhead handles. They could have actually been quite badly hurt.

 
My cat, "Spot," chillin' while we sail

Unfortunately, this isn’t the end of the story. About two weeks later, I had exited Twin Dolphin Marina and was moving west in that nice, open area, when – lo and behold – a Sundancer came up behind me! It held back, and I thought “How polite. He knows his boat wake and isn’t going to toss me around by accident.”

Not by accident, but on purpose – again. This time you didn’t bother to circle, but you did blast your engines with everything they had and threw my boat around again. Sorry to tell you, but I have lee cloths over my shelves. You didn’t toss any of my belongings either time. I’m also happy to report that you didn’t kill my cat, who is always in her carrier in the cockpit now where I can grab it and keep her safe from people like you, and you didn’t injure anyone who might have had the misfortune of being in the cabin when you pulled that stunt. Thank goodness. That could have put you in prison.

Could it have been two different boats? I suppose, but it doesn’t seem very likely, does it?

As I say, I apologize for taking your picture, but it doesn’t justify your behavior. Next time I’m getting your numbers and calling the Coast Guard.

        

Sailors, this kind of behavior on the part of power boats is NOT typical. It is, however, why you should secure your belongs below, because whether intentional or unintentional, wakes happen. 

 Go to our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/boldlygosailing?skip_nax_wizard=true