tugbarge

this in the rules for right of way falls into a powerboat designation, as it is one piece, and is lighted as one power boat. Even though a troller may be fishing, commercial or sporty, it is not "trawling", the only category of fishing boat that has the working designation. So, a bigger boat may deserve your consideration, for safety sake, and logical avoiding, but it has its right because it is in a channel and cannot change course safely or is constrained by draft. The tug and fishing boat collision resulted in criminal proceedings most likely because the accident and consequent death was not reported to the authorities. If they both had their lights(the barge wears red green port starboard just like the fishing boat does, unless it is trawling a net and has green over white, fishing tonight, on its light mast) they were equal and the collision marks showed corresponding injury to a violation of R.O.W. AIS that is now available is a great aid for boating, especially at night. It picks out targets and alerts you. HH

On 12/10/2010 3:45 AM, Helen Horn wrote: > The tug and fishing boat collision resulted in criminal proceedings > most likely because the accident and consequent death was not reported > to the authorities. It was, as I recall, because they did not keep a watch and did not know they had run over the commercial fishing vessel. That's about as irresponsible as you can get, not looking where you are going or even being aware of the need to avoid a collision. Chris Campbell