Pinball - Mooring field style

[sbman]

Why waste time thinking about it? People are stupid. **** happens. Sailors are not all experienced old salts doing everything perfect and blather about how great they are all the time regardless of the fact that you asked them what time it was…

I wanted to know who and what rule/law is in place in situations like this. My wording and explanation of what happened took center stage though instead of the point of the post.

I'm completely in psneeld's corner on this one. OP, please, your post has quite a few assumptions/maybes and while you saw what you saw, in many if not most investigations that is not the full story. You use 300 words in "Pinball - Mooring field style", a thinly veiled sailboats/boaters suck thread, to surround the question of "What's the right thing to do when you see a boat hit another boat?".

What do you do when you witness something happen to another boat, a vehicle, someone's yard? Do you have some integrity, do you follow the Golden Rule, or are you in the "I don't want to get involved" camp? Don't really need local law or mooring field, yacht club, customs to dictate your actions. Pretty simple to me.

I'm a sailor at heart who has gone to the dark side....

Yes it's pretty simple. I do have an opinion of the situation that happened, just like posters form an opinion of my intent from the posting.

The point of the thread and the question at hand was, what should a bystander do (if anything). Secondarily but perhaps more importantly what rules even apply?

Everybody makes mistakes, and we find ourselves in bad situations. I like to know what the domain is that I'm navigating from as many aspects as possible. Sometimes things that 'make sense' and what seems simple isn't as obvious or simple as it seems, especially in the heat of a moment in which things are going wrong.

I've done enough research now to know what rules apply, where they are found and who generally enforces them and under what circumstances.

 

[backinblue]

I'm still a little puzzeled at what the point of this thread is. Everybody has seen mistakes made. If you witness some damage being done, best you can do is try to record as much info as possible and pass it along to the owners of a damaged boat and/or the authorities. Cameras and video are available to anyone with a phone today. If the point of this thread is to just beat up on a sailboater w/o knowing anything about why he dis what he did, then there is really no point in debating, only lots of guessing.

 

[FF]

Sounds like the poor fellow was in a "racing" boat where sail area is minimum to lower the rating , and a full crew is required to hoist enough sail to be able to ghost.

 

[Rejuvination]

As a tech in a marina located on the lee side of an island along the gulf coast, I see this more often than you might think. the tides come ripping down through the pass and when the weather out in gulf gets rough the pass seems calm. Good people under estimate the forces of nature and over estimate both the power of the boat and the skills available.

Very few people smirk or smile when things go wrong and they get jammed up, most don't seem to know what to do once they kayos begins. There is usually very little actual damage done to the vessels, mostly pride.

Most marinas and mooring fields are full of people with nothing to do but watch the smallest bit of activity and cameras are everywhere so it will be the talk of the town.

The manly thing to do is suck it up, go tell on yourself, apologize, and offer to make good. Which shows the respect most of us would appreciate if we found the situation reversed and the smudge is on our boat. who know you might meet your next ex-wife

Keep me smiling fellas and Happy New Year