Ellen MacArthur wrote:
"Jeff" wrote

| This, as a generality, is nonsense. There are lots of situations
| where amateurs do "serious work." Moreover, towing a boat with a boat
| not setup for towing, is not always an easy thing. Further, if the
| tow declares itself a RAM, you have to respect that.

No I don't have to respect it! People can't go around "declaring" they are
RAM. They have to be in compliance with a rule that says they're RAM.

Not really. On the water, a vessel is a RAM because it declares
itself to be one. After the fact, a judge may say that was not that
was not proper.

A vessel is bound by the signals it sees. If, for example, you see a
sailboat without a steaming light or cone, but with exhaust smoke, you
can't assume it really under power since it may actually be running a
genset. If someone is showing tow lights and RAM lights but the boat
doesn't otherwise look like a commercial tow boat, you cannot assume
he must be lying.


That's
part of what my dredge example is all about. I can tell the marine patrol officer
that I'm a dredging but he's goona arrest me, throw me in jail and I'll stay there
a long time because I'm not dredging. I'm breaking the law.
It's the rule that makes them RAM. Nothing else. Not if they say so, not if God
says so... "Oh officer I say I'm obeying the speed limit so that makes it fact." "Sorry
mam, please sign the ticket here..."

Irrelevant. You can make up all sorts of stories, but you simply
can't say that because a boat looks like a recreational vessel is must
be an illegal tow and you're not bound by the signals it shows.


Your like otn. You left out work that severly limits maneuverability. You can't
pick and choose. Both are a necessary part of the rule.... Using only one part or
another is not using the rule...

I didn't leave it out. Its not for me to say what affects
maneuverability. Its for the skipper of the boat. A judge can say
later that he was wrong, but another boater on the water can't.




| And using the trawler with its dinghy is not a good analogy. More
| often than not amateur tows involve two equally sized boats. I've
| done hundreds of tows, usually in a 13 foot Whaler, or small launch,
| and many of them I would consider "unruly." Though I never had lights
| I often conveyed with gestures my hope that other would give me a wide
| berth. BTW, try towing a flooded dinghy sometime - slowing down is
| not a good option because the boat will immediately swerve and
| capsize. When the tow has a lot of momentum, the options become very
| limited.

So, the rule says nothing about limited options. It says work that severely
limits maneuverabilty. Your whaler loses both ways. It's not work as shown
in the examples, (any court would say doing a favor isn't work) and there's
no severe limitation of maneuverability. You know severe don't you. Look at the
examples. A dredge is stuck to the pipe. It's severly limited. A minsweeper has
to stay on a particular course or it will blow up. It's severly limited. A salvage
or dive operator is attached to the wreck or divers by hoses and cables. And
on it goes. Show me one example in the rule where the boat can turn right,
turn left, go forward, back up, go around in circles, speed up slow down, stop
and drink a beer. All the things it can do normally...

You know not of what you say. Most of the tows I mentioned were
"work" since I was employed to run the "crash boat" at several sailing
clubs. However, sometimes it did it on a volunteer basis. And
sometimes I did it for boaters not affiliated with the clubs. So does
the observer get to say "he's not on the payroll today so he has no
rights"? Also, the boats we generally had to rescue were not self
bailing, so they came up with a ton of water in them. Also, in colder
weather, we took the "survivors" back to the dock brought in the
capsize singlehanded. Are you still going to claim that towing a 12
foot dink filled with water creates no limitation of maneuverability?
Clearly, you have no experience in this area.


| And one more thing: you should listen to Otn, he has more experience
| than all of us put together.

Maybe so but experience isn't the be all and end all. Lawyers and the courts are.
That's why the rules have to be looked at with a legal eye. Legal and experience are
two different things. The court will call *expert* witnesses but they're only a
small part of the proceedings. Sorry, but I can't seem to have much respect for
otn when it comes to his understanding of this rule. He's wrong. Those little
pleasure boats-neither one is RAM. The one that was broke down was NUC but
that's another story. You seem to be familiar with court cases and the rules.
I bet there's one proving me right.

The issue here is not whether Scotty's tow was a RAM, but whether you
can claim that its impossible for such boats to ever be a RAM. And on
that point, you are clearly wrong.



Cheers,
Ellen