A friend described a situation from the past weekend that I would like to pose to the collective brain trust on this list. There were three boats involved. All three were out day sailing. Two boats were travelling the same direction and the owners knew each other so they had an impromptu “race” as they were tacking upwind in a commercial harbour. These two boats had no verbal agreement to race but they were each trying to best the other. The third boat had a couple likely in their sixties out sailing by themselves.
One of the two boats that was “racing” was on port tack (we will call this P) while the couple out sailing was on stbd tack (S). The heolmsman on P decided he would pass close by the stern of S. P passing astern of S is in my mind obeying Colregs in Canada. However since P was being competitive P planned to pass close by the stern of S. Before this could happen S tacked to port at close quarters not giving P sufficient room to avoid a collision. The boats ended up colliding with the sides of the hulls touching but no readily apparent damage or injury to either party. P hailed to S asking if everyone was OK and received no response and both boats proceeded on their way. So my question. Is a port boat passing close astern of a Stbd boat sufficient to satisfy the Colregs? Does S radically altering course without giving P room to keep clear mean that S has violated Colregs? I know that if this was an organized race that according to RRS S would be at fault. I am wondering how this would be interepreted under Colregs? The third boat was involved only as a witness Thankfully I was not involved in this in any way. Mike Persistence Halifax, NS
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