Dave wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:25:42 -0500, Jeff Morris
said:


The t-bone incident had an surprising aspect: because my friends
admitted they didn't see the other boat, they were assessed 24% of the
blame - the port/starboard rule only applies "when in sight" and thus
was somewhat voided because of the lack of a proper lookout.


That has to be the worst reasoning I've heard of in years. Sounds like a
good reason not to use BoatUS.


So what's wrong?


Nothing wrong with the first part of the statement. The problem is with the
second part. Vessels are "in sight" of one another when one "can be
observed" from the other, not when one _is_ observed by the other. See Rule
3(j). If one didn't see the other because the first wasn't keeping a proper
lookout, it was nevertheless "in sight" because if a proper lookout had been
kept it _could_ have observed the second. The consequence of failing to
observe the port/starboard rule should be totally unaffected by whether a
proper lookout was being kept.

As usual, you're confusing a little bit of knowledge for wisdom. Of
course the rules are not abrogated because of the lack of a lookout.
I'm not claiming that the rules somehow changed because of the lack of a
lookout. The issue here is assessing blame. I simply passed on one
such judgment and a snippet of the logic, passed down third hand.
Unlike the racing rules, in these cases the total blame equals 100%,
thus the relative blame has to be assessed comparing the various
violations. Although I can't say that all courts would make the same
judgment, it is clear that if the "privileged" vessel did not maintain a
lookout, and that contributed to a collision, then that vessel is
assessed part of the blame.

In racing, you are correct: the consequence of being in the wrong in a
port/starboard case is a DSQ (or circles), the other boat may also
suffer a DSQ for not attempting to prevent the collision. In a sense,
200% blame can therefore be assessed.