On Sun, 21 Aug 2011 07:51:35 -0400, wrote:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2011 09:46:39 -0700, wrote:

On Sat, 20 Aug 2011 08:44:39 -0400, wrote:

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:04:15 -0700, wrote:

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:00:06 -0400, BAR wrote:

In article ,
says...

I suspect this sailboat captain is rethinking who has the "Right of Way".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tUoUxzt9sI

The bigger you are the more right of way you have. Doesn't matter if you
are on the highway or on the water.

According to the regulation I've read, this is incorrect a lot of the
time.

Read this, "The bigger you are, the more likely you are to win in an
altercation."

The sailboat loses. End of story. No admiralty court is going to fault
the supertanker captain. Even with a proper lookout, there is no way
in hell they could have seen the sailboat dart in from of them. Even
if they could have, there is no way they could have stopped.

Boats don't have brakes. You have to work around that.

I never said otherwise. However, the statement that bigger you are
gives you "more right of way" is wrong. There is no such language in
any of the rules, inland or international.

This is what Tim posted as a counter example, and I've included my
comments:

Who had the right of way here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkqKpnU8sCE

The boat from which the vid was taken, obviously. However, it had
nothing to do with the size of either boat. I would assign 90% blame
to the sailboat and 10% to the larger boat. It was a crossing
situation, but the bigger boat didn't attempt (as far as can be seen
or heard) to either take evasive action or sound an alarm... five or
more beeps I believe.

or how about here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4qwq...eature=related

You gotta remember that the larger the vessel, the slower the response
time.

In the case of the second vid, my reading of the rules are that it was
a crossing situation, so the boat being hit was probably "right" but
should have tried to avoid the collision. And, the boat that was
taking the vid should have avoided the situation. I would assign 60%
fault to the boat from which the vid was taken and 40% to the boat
that was hit.

I'm sure there is precedence that the court would look at also.

Actually, after reviewing more information, I suspect the tanker
captain would be ruled as contributing a certain amount of negligence
to the accident.

In that area, during the frequent races, there is a speed limit
imposed. The tanker is clearly hauling ass.

I strongly suspect it would be a case of two wrongs contributing to an
inevitable accident.

It's hard to tell. The only thing I didn't see (hear) was lack of
warning from the tanker, but it's possible that happened and we just
didn't hear it in the vid.

From what I've read on maritime courts, they almost always assign some
blame to both parties.