Musings on Yacht/Ship Collisions cont.
Clark May 10th, 2007
Well, I hoped that my thoughts about ship/yacht accidents would gel into some kind of epiphany and they didn’t. And I had the perfect photo to post, and it somehow got garbled. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out, you know? So here is a pretty picture of Condesa moored near the Romanche Glacier in Tierra del Fuego.
The gist of what I was thinking about accidents with ships is this: The really big, fast ships are relatively new on the scene…let’s call it the last forty years. Sailboats have been around forever, and don’t go much faster than they ever have. A parallel might be drawn between pedestrians, who have always been around, and cars when they came on the scene. Cars certainly took over. We live in a world of streets and freeways, but it is still the car’s responsibility to look out for the pedestrians whenever they cross paths. The fragility of the pedestrian vs. the killing power of the car is acknowledged, accepted, and avoided wherever possible.
In the case of the big ships, they are the newcomers on the scene with the speed, bulk, and killing power, but because of their size they are unmaneuverable, restricted by their draft and inability to stop, and can’t see very well ahead of them, so everyone better watch out! Unacceptable! I would argue that because of their size, and thus potential danger to all of us yachtsmen and fishermen, who outnumber them around the globe by a factor of thousands, it is their responsibility to tread softly. “I’m big so get out of my way” is not an acceptable answer. “I’m big so I need to be careful” is more like it.
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