Ellen MacArthur wrote:
"Jeff" wrote
| Ellen MacArthur wrote:
| 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

I agree with this. But how do they declare it. They have to use lights and shapes.
The boat Scotty's talking about had no such lights or shapes. How can you know another
boat is RAM unless they identify themselves? You can't. You must use what your eyes and
ears tell you. And Scotty should have used his eyes and ears to tell he was in a crossing
situation with a motorboat. It's the same reason why anchored boats are required to show
lights and shapes. You have to know it's anchored so you can know how to treat it...

So now you're backpedaling. As I said in my first post, Scotty's case
was likely not a RAM.


| 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.

Exactly like I said. It has to identify itself. You can't go around assuming
every boat is RAM or NUC or Fishing, etc. Scotty's little pleasure boat wasn't
showing any shapes or lights.

You were there?



| 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.

I disagree. I say it's up to you to know the rule that defines RAM says it must
be *severly* unable to maneuver. You see it going along a hootin' and a hollerin'
having plenty of time to act obnoxious. It ain't hooked to a pipe, it ain't dredging,
it ain't engaged in dive operations and it ain't trawling with nets. It's towing but
it ain's severly unable to maneuver. It's maneuvering for heavens sake. That's enough
to tell you it ain't severly unable to maneuver. It's up to you to choose the rule to
operate under. You say "there's a motorboat. I'm a sailboat the rules say I must stand on until...

Total nonsense. Maybe if you stomp your feet and hold your breath it
would be different.



| | 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...
|

| 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.

I'm saying according to the examples in the rule it AIN'T *severely* limited in ability
to maneuver. Good grief!

Perhaps you should read the rules again. Note in particular the words
"but not limited to."




| 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.

I'm not saying that. I'm saying in Scotty's case it was clearly not a RAM. Any fool can see it.
Read the examples in the Rules again. They tell you some examples of what it means to be severely
unmaneuverable. They say there are others. But, it follows the others have to be of the same kind.
One little pleasure boat towing his buddy because he ran out of gas can't be called severe.

The rules specifically include "a vessel engaged in a towing operation
such as severely restricts the towing vessel and her tow in their
ability to deviate from their course." It doesn't say "but not
including recreational boats." Since you clearly don't have any
experience in this area, you probably don't know that towboats are
setup with the line attached well forward of the rudder. Without
this, the towing vessel has very limited control. For this reason,
recreational tows often have restricted maneuverability.

There might be some things when little pleasure boats are severely unable to maneuver. Towing
another boat of similar size isn't one of them.. That's all.

You just show your ignorance here. Most of the time it should work
out OK, but not necessarily.