Yachting Monthly - April 2016

APRIL 2016 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com 3

I

t’s hard not to see ships as enemies when

you’re looking at their bows from the helm

of a yacht, or worse, tracking their targets

on a radar screen. For safety’s sake we

assume there’s just one sleep-deprived person

on the bridge who hasn’t seen us and won’t, or

can’t, do anything to avoid running us down.

It’s a sad state of affairs but hardly surprising

• and not just because most ships have grown
  into leviathans. Yachtsmen and seamen used to
  understand and respect each other back in the
  days when half of the world’s merchant fleet
  sailed under the red ensign, but we’ve much
  less in common today and we don’t understand
  each other. We rarely even talk on VHF radio.
  I’ve often enjoyed crossing shipping lanes,
  watching the relentless pace and mind-
  boggling scale of the great supply chain of
  globalised capitalism. But it’s a different story
  in poor visibility or a lumpy sea, when I feel like
  I’m playing a slow-motion but deadly serious
  version of the 1980s computer game, Frogger.
  Most skippers I know have a story or two
  about close shaves with ships; I’m not going to
  bore you with mine. What they all have in
  common is that it’s never our fault. We only
  ever hear one side of the story from other

small-boat sailors so our fear and mistrust of

shipping become entrenched. I had to be

reminded last summer, by a skipper less

muddle-headed than me, that when a yacht

crew needs rescuing in mid-ocean it’s nearly

always a merchant ship that picks them up.

The trick, if we can manage it, is to stay

keenly aware and keep a good lookout at all

times without falling into unthinking paranoia.

While AIS is a boon for collision avoidance, it

also helps to have a working knowledge of how

various types of commercial vessels are likely to

behave, at sea and in harbour approaches. This

used to be common knowledge among amateur

sailors, but it’s become harder to acquire.

In this issue, Rear Admiral Sir John Lang

distils a lifetime’s experience of seafaring – in

merchant ships, warships, submarines and a

variety of sailing yachts, and as former head of

the Marine Accident Investigation Branch

(MAIB) – into eight pages of useful information

and advice. If you’d like to know what sort of

ship that is on the horizon, where she’s likely to

be going, how manoeuvrable

she is, who’s on the bridge,

how much sleep they’ve had

and more, turn to p16.

‘It’s easy to see ships as enemies’

PHOTO: COLIN WORK

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PHOTO: GRAHAM SNOOK

Kieran Flatt, editor

[email protected]

VIEW FROM THE HELM

A working knowledge of shipping makes close encounters a lot safer. For useful information and expert advice, turn to p