Wow... so a friend and I moved my boat from its old home to the new location
yesterday. Wednesday was nice and sunny, but Thursday started with light fog
that turned into a steady rain. The visibility was very good for distances
of up to about two miles, but then dropped off pretty quickly due to the fog
and rain.

Some other background info...

We were in the deep mostly commercial channel that connects the two marinas,
in the center outbound lane, so about 1/3 the distance across from right to
left. There are many big ships moored on the commercial docks, some being
loaded or refitted, others that will probably never sail again. There are
multiple small channels off the main channel. The main channel is fairly
busy with commercial traffic, mostly tugs pushing or pulling barges, not
including hosting several large marinas, the biggest of which has 500+
craft. The main channel is also fairly narrow especially at the main turn.

Most power boats (non-commercial) with relatively shallow drafts and big
engines tend to go on the wrong side of the inbound lane (not saying it's
right, but that's what they do) to avoid the slower outboat sailboats. (I
suppose this is better than them screaming by with large wakes.) The turning
area (where the channel makes a sharp turn and where the truly big ships
berth) is perhaps 100 yards wide, although the big ships would certainly not
be near the edges.

Anyway, we headed out of the marina, crossed the inland turn part of the
channel, and were in the middle of the outbound lane, just past the turn.
There's a huge, rusting liberty ship side-tied right at the corner and past
that a very small side channel. As we made a fairly deep turn to start out
the main channel, I noticed that there was a tug on side-tie to a barge
heading in, approximately 1 mile ahead of us. This thing was huge. It looked
huge even that far away, and was proceeding quite slowly inbound. I felt we
had plenty of time to make the deep turn, then get back in line on my side
of the channel, which is what we did. We were doing about 5 kts. Sails down,
just engine.

I finished the turn, then started to come back to "center" on my side. The
liberty ship was being passed on my starboard, so that would mean I had a
bit more room on the inside of the channel in case the incoming tug/barge
needed the room... not sure if he was going to turn behind us to the left or
side-tie the barge ahead of us.

Just as I passed the liberty ship and was nearly across the side channel
just past her bow, a push tug came lumbering out of the side channel right
for us! We're talking 100 maybe 120 feet off our starboard side just stern
of the shrouds and really moving. At this point the incoming tub/barge is a
lot closer, perhaps 1000 yards, but even worse, another tug is in front of
them (not related to them) coming down toward us with the intention it
looked like of going into yet another one of the small channels, thus was
coming down the outbound lane. He was slightly more to the center of the
channel, perhaps 300 yards ahead and moving pretty well. Since I didn't see
them previously, must have come out of another side channel. (They do this a
lot.)

The guy in the enclosed bridge (way high up from our perspective) wasn't
even looking in our direction. No way to turn away without getting in the
way of the oncoming traffic. Obviously, I couldn't hold my course and speed.
Over his engines, I'm sure he couldn't have heard a horn, and there was no
time to hail him. My friend was waving, but he wasn't looking. So, I figured
the only thing to do was to try and throttle up, hoping I could stay ahead
of him long enough for him to see us. At this point the oncoming tub that I
hadn't see before saw us and started to back, sensing that this was not a
good situation.

We were unable to out-run the push barge, but I did slow the rate of his
approach a bit. 10-15 seconds into it, the driver suddenly snapped his head
in our direction (he was practically directly astern of us, so I'm still not
sure what he was looking at while he was driving), then throttled way, way
down, and the situation was resolved. I think the other tug must have hailed
him or he saw us out of the corner of his eye. He finally acknowledged my
friend's wave, but he looked pretty harassed at that point. I normally would
have said "something" to him directly, but it was really starting to rain,
and we just wanted to get done with it. I can't imagine the damage had he
hit us with one of those huge vertical bumpers.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com