1st day on the bay!

My wife and I had such a great first season's sail on the bay this past Sunday I just had to write in here about it. It was especially sweet because it comes after a particularly hard winter for me recovering from a major illness (cancer) that left me just wiped out after the treatments.

But now I'm feeling great and it was fantastic to be sailing again. Thoughts of it are what kept me going through the winter. It was an interesting sail too because we had winds from 5 kts. to 15 kts. and gusts up to around 22 kts. So I really had to work the sheets and traveler to keep "Vesper" on her feet.
Once in front of Thomas Point light, down to the bridge and then back to the dock. On the way to the bridge we saw a Navy destroyer type vessel at anchor and we gave her a lot of room. However, one of those Navy shuttle craft, about thirty or so feet long, came motoring out from Annapolis on it's way to the ship. As it approached us it was obvious that they were on a collision course and so I gave them a toot on the air horn after not seeing the helms man or anyone else on board. Out popped the head of a female Navy helms "man" who immediately slowed the boat down and altered course. If I hadn't used the air horn we surly would have collided. She wasn't even watching where she was going or what was around her!

Just goes to show you can't take anything for granted.

As a Naval Officer, this disturbs me. As many of you may be aware, there should have been a Bo'sun's Mate (normally a very professional seaman whether male or female) and Boat Officer (commissioned Navy officer) on watch. They are trained and held accountable for complying with rules of the road. The emphasis placed on this during my boat officer training as a newly commissioned ensign xx years ago is still pretty clear in my head.

The Navy Safety Center http://safetycenter.navy.mil/afloat/surface/default.htm would probably appreciate being able to use your story to help correct any safety awareness issues. By regulation, they only use such information for training, not legal investigations, etc, since more people will confess if they know they will not be punished.

The Navy badly wants to avoid allowing liberty boat operators to get complacement - swapping paint with a sailboat off of Annapolis would be a nightmare of epic proportions. So your cautionary tale would probably help them out. I could pass an edited version via the Navy intranet if you don't want to contact them yourself and if you permit.

Pass it on

We thought it very strange that a "liberty boat" (thanks for the correct terminology) would get that close to us without a warning signal of some kind, let alone the fact that we couldn't see anyone's face. In fact, my wife thought that we might be in the wrong with allowing ourselves to get so close to a Navy vessel. I told her that I thought we were "in the right" since the vessel approached us.

If this incident helps in anyway to avoid any future collisions between a Navy and civilian vessel then by all means pass it on. If you need any more information from me concerning this then all you need to do is to give me the word. The last thing I'd want to happen is to have some Navy gray on my civilian white hull.