Is there a VTS in that channel in North Carolina?

Or the 30-foot channel with the idiot sailor?
(Who sounds like he needs to stay in little ditches, lacking the common sense
required to get any farther from shore than he could easily swim)



Not that rules prevent stupidity, and there is a difference between being right
and being dead right, but.....

(from memory-----gist is correct) No vessel under 20m and no vessel under sail
shall impede a power driven vessel operating in
a traffic control scheme.

Fishermen often use the same incorrect argument in these cases that sailors
often
use; the rules do give fishing priority status.....but "fishing" is furhter
diefined in a manner that clearly limits the rule to boats fishing with nets or
other cumbersome equipment, (not rod and reel sportsmen).

Same thing with the classic stereotype of
a brainless sailor in the traffic lanes, sailing his 24-footer under the bow of
a container ship and hollering about his "right of way". A little, incomplete
knowledge is a dangerous thing.

If there is an established VTS, both the sailor and the fishermen were
absolutely wrong without the least defense available to them through the Rules.

If there's barge traffic in the one location, there may be a VTS. The 30-foot
channel?
Less likely.

There are rules against sailing in most marinas, where fairways are typically
at least twice as wide as the 30-foot channel reported here. The rule of common
sense should have inspired the sailor to do otherwise.

The Rules were never intended as a license for sailors to deliberately annoy
or endanger powerboaters.