What The!!!!

Recently on a long trip back from Hkg, in the early hours of the morning, and not able to sleep i went up top and sat with my deckie. On radar there was a contact off to port about 26nm away.Now thats not strange being out at sea you see lots of boats -ships, What made me very angry about this contact was this..This SAILING yacht was on a collision course with us, I was on the radio tryin to contact him with no response...to cut a long story short, this Goose was sound asleep, no one on watch and no thought for himself or any other vessel that came upon him. I gave him a few short blasts and he woke up wavein a tourch around, no contact no nothin. My question is are all yachties like this? or is that standard practice.

 

As if commercial ships always follow the rules. AT LEAST half of the commercial ships I attempt contact with do not answer. And over the years that has been hundreds of attempts. Granted many are fishing boats and many fleets have little regard for other vessels. And I am not talking about frivolous contact attempts either. They were mostly concerning possible near passes or attempts at giving working and larger vessels the room they needed.

 

Most commercial shipping dont, they have the opinion of ...I'm bigger than you get out the way.... and they are, and I do.

 

I would say "not standard practice" -but also not uncommon.

The chosen backstop for most vessels in the open sea is statistics: it is enormously unlikely to encounter another vessel.

I am a solo sailor, and thus, have my vessel "off watch" at times. I rely significantly on the above backstop. Generally, I will "lose" any collision with any vessel that is in the open sea, so my motive for avoiding it is pretty high.

I use radar which does an automatic scan (with alarm) every 15min, and also an AIS alarm. I am considering adding an alarm that responds to an incoming radar signal. I never sleep in coastal waters. It's still a gamble.

Hopefully, a system like AIS will mature such that all vessels actually "talk" to each other's AIS systems and sound an alert in the case of proximity or converging course. Pretty simple electronics, but not there yet as far as adoption.

 

JPC - rearrage the following into a well known phrase or saying "LAW, BREAKING, ARE, YOU"

ALL vessels at sea, with the exception of warships who are overmanned will at times miss others for various reasons! Sleep, making a meal, drunk, reading a book, talking to his mate (possibly on the telephone or radio!) or maybe even just gone for a wee - but it happens. No excuse but as they say '**** happens'. However the majority DO NOT do it delibrately, with one exception! The 'single hander' or 'short hander' will at some time make a delibrate decission to sleep! He will justify this by all sorts of stories about alarms etc but these are both electronic (electrics and saltwater do not mix very well - the nearer you are to it the more chance of it failing, small boats beware) and we are all human and MAY sllep through the alarm!) But IT IS TILL PREMEDITATED MURDER. Goverments compound this by allowing singlehanded races etc to happen (some even encourage it).

"Don't be a fool, follow the rule"

It could of course include self murder (suicide)

 

On AIS

Not sure how much people have had to do with AIS, but until the electronics and programming are totally idiot proof there will be problems caused by the use of AIS.
Right now I often have officers telling me that "AIS is better than ARPA", I've had VTIS mistakenly ID my ship due to errors in the systems on different vessels(own included), was on a ship not so long ago where the AIS assumed that the external GPS was always on WGS-84 Datum, we normally had it set on a different datum to agree with the charts in our area of operation. Discovered this issue when at anchor, looking out the window and comparing that with the radar display and the AIS display, well the mark one eye ball taking a bearing showed that the AIS was churning out incorrect info, hmm... spoke with a couple of the other ships around the anchorage, compared types of gear, found that every ship with a certain brand GPS and AIS was able to give false position reports, largest error was approx 10nm.
I think some accidents will occur because of mistaken belief that "The Alarm will warn me",

AIS can work well, I always think - it is another tool in the box but has to be used with caution - remember it's limitations / errors

Be interested in what others think.

 

Me too: -hearing what other people think.

Safewalrus, you're right, and I didn't mean to give the impression of advocating off-watch sailing or that certain pieces of equipment make it OK. In the perfect world, it might not happen, but in our world it does; I'd like to see it as safe as possible.

 

yes he is right!!! how many times do you hear "Sorry im late ,slept thru the alarm " or "alarm didnt go off" thats ok when your on land and in bed......But matey on the sea if you missed that alarm you could be in a world of trouble. Solo sailing should be illegal

 

seadogs20 "Solo sailing should be illegal"

The sea is the last reachable frontier. And you want to go and spoil that too?

 

I guess you mean ocean sailing...but that is already illegal, because legally you have to have someone on watch...and that is impossible in an ocean singlehanded crossing.

Looks like nobody cares...first you would have to ban single handed races.

 

Correction - Governments have to ban ban single handed races!

Actually I don't care all that much for the safety of the single hander, if the daft bugger wants to kill himself let him! Unfortunately this is said from the chair at home. When at sea and somebody shouts help ALL Seamen (no matter the nation or anomosity at the time), will immediately drop everything and divert to that persons help!! Risking his own life to help. Unfortunately seafarers have been lost (dead!) helping out 'lone yacht'smen/women' who have run into trouble! Most of the time these people are not out there for the glory of some bloody newspaper! After all every seafarer is (or should be) aware of the 'rules of the road' and the 'practice of good seamanship!' and probably wouldn't take the risk but for being goaded on by the newspaper etc for their readers who are sat at home in comfort and need a cheap thrill.....go play with the traffic on the nearest motorway; the mess is easier to clean up!

 

Nero, you still have to follow the rules.....dont ya???

 

Probably think he's got an exemption from God to ignore everybody else! Unfortunately you get 'em; trouble is it only takes one ripe banana to ripen the whole batch!

 

No god ... no worries.

Laws and rules are words. Probably a good idea to follow them. Most certainly need to understand them and the idea they represent. But, if everybody marched along after them, nothing would be much fun.

Heck, If all the rule breakers were in prison, then we wouldn't have our current politicians or the ones who made the rules in the first place. Now what kinda of a world would that be?

Was not aware that there was a governmental body that has imposed laws on the open sea. It has been my dream for over 20 years to sail the ocean solo. Now, y'all are trying to take that away from me too.

Don't get too excited about me causing a problem, It'll be another 4 years before I finish up my catamaran. smile May not be up for another hell week.

 

And when you go how many will you take with you? if you see what I mean! T'was said the first nero was mad! does history repeat itself?

Certainly!

"I din't suffer from insanity, I'm enjoying every minute of it"