>From: Jerry Hawkins <jhawkins_at_cisco.com> There was a major collision in the English Channel in August -- two experienced captains, large commercial boats, radar, GPS, and damn if they didn't hit each other anyhow. A freighter out of San Francisco hit a large fishing! > boat called the Jack Junior a few years back, caught its nets, dragged it >underwater, and no trace was found for months Regrettably, not an unusual occurence. Ironically, two ships who might have otherwise passed each other safely in fog, unaware of each other's presence, will sometimes see each other on their radar scopes. Then, even though there are clear rules in the collision regulations (and they could and should hail one another on the radio to clarify intentions), they will procede to do the marine equivilant of that dumb dance you do when you meet someone coming down the hall: both step to one side - the same side - then both "correct" to the other same side and so on. When this happens with large ships, you rapidly run out of options. This type of accident occurs often enough that safety investigators have a term for it: "radar assisted collision". Philip Torrens N49°16' W123°06' *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Oct 22 1999 - 15:43:37 PDT
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