In article , Donal
wrote:

"Peter Wiley" wrote in message
. ..
In article , Jeff Morris
wrote:

"Rick" wrote in message
link.net...
Jeff Morris wrote:

I appreciate that blame is is usually shared. But if a kayak
crosses an
oil
tanker, what blame do you assign to tanker?

Without being too pedantic, it is not in my job description to assign
blame. There will be a board of Coast Guard officers to handle that
chore. It will be a decision based on more than I know about the
circumstances.

In other words, you don't know.

So what is a safe speed for a tanker in a VTS in the fog? You keep
evading
the
question. Should all shipping shut down in the fog?

By Donal's logic, there isn't a safe speed. Given that the
time/distance taken for a tanker to stop/turn vastly exceeds the
distance a human can see in thick fog, a tanker is always at risk of
running over a kayaker insisting on being the stand-on vessel and
therefore cannot navigate safely.

So, yeah, Donal's basically arguing that shipping has to come to a
standstill if the lookout can't *see* further than it takes the ship to
stop or change course, because a kayak couldn't be reliably detected by
radar. Nice thought, pity about its practicality.

No, No, No! That in definitely *not* the impression that I intended to
convey.

I was simply arguing that a vessel should not travel at 25 kts in fog
without a lookout.

Which lookout is for all practical purposes useless as his vision is
less than the stopping distance in the case of large commercial
shipping. I stipulate the Colregs says there must be one, but there's
little point. My point is that if you *insist* that ships must travel
sufficiently slowly to have the ability to take evasive action/stop on
a visual sighting, you are in effect stating that commercial traffic
must cease whenever visibility is so poor as to be less than the
distance needed to stop/manoeuvre.

The guy in the kayak cannot expect ships to slow beyond the point where they
lose the ability to steer. I guess that for most big ships that this is
about 4-5 kts????

Even at 4-5 knots if you're in fog with 50m visibility there's no hope
of manoeuvering fast enough to miss an idiot in a kayak. 50m is half of
a ship length for my icebreaker.

In reality, I know that they will exceed this speed.
When I cross the TSS in fog, I expect that most ships will be doing about 12
kts, and that some will be doing 18 kts. I also expect/know that some of
them won't be sounding their fog horns.

The kayak is taking a chance when he crosses the TSS. However, that does
not mean that the ships in the TSS should carry on as if there was no risk.

They don't. They monitor their radars and radios. It's small vessels
with no radio, no radar and poor/no reflectivity that are at risk - AND
THEY HAVE AN OBLIGATION NOT TO IMPEDE THE COMMERCIAL VESSEL. In my
opinion the commercial vessel should keep a lookout as required and
proceed as if other vessels were also obeying the Colregs. If a kayaker
gets reduced to berley we can give them a Darwin award. Stupidity has
its consequences and they weren't obeying the Colregs because if they
got hit, they were obviously in a position to impede the commercial
vessel in the shipping lane. So sad, too bad.

I'm not allowed to run down pedestrians on the road but courts have
aquitted drivers who've run over & killed people asleep/drunk lying in
the road, on the rare occasion that a charge has been laid. There's a
reasonable assumption that such activities won't happen and when they
do, too damn bad for the idiot.

If you wish to do 25 kts through the Antartic, in fog, then I have no
objection.

Unfortunately, 14 kts is the best we can do :-( Besides when the fog's
really thick it's usually a blizzard and you can't see anything so we
park in a convenient icefloe. Radar is good, but hitting a bergy bit is
still possible. We cut out hull plate the size of a VW beetle at both
the last 2 drydocks due to such an impact. A kayak (or Benetau)
wouldn't even scratch the paint.

PDW