6 • Aug. 28 - Sept. 10, 2015 • The Log
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Scalawags and the lack of a ‘moral compass’
Had a very disappointing experi- ence at 22nd St. Landing in San Pedro. On Aug. 2, I was taking fami- ly to Catalina Island. As I always do, I had my inflatable dinghy in tow behind my boat. At about noon, while we were about a half mile out of Angels Gate Lighthouse (L.A. Harbor) my nephew looked behind us and said, “where’s the dinghy?” I turned the boat around immediate- ly in order to back track and retrieve our tender but, search as we might, it was nowhere to be found. I was having trouble under- standing this, in that it could not have been adrift for more than 15 minutes, in that this was the last time I saw it. I called the Coast Guard after about 20 minutes to explain. They took a full description and made an announcement over Channel 16 to all mariners in the area to be on the look out for an adrift vessel. The Coast Guard was very confident that someone would see it, retrieve it, either way report it to the Coast Guard or Port Police (Who I also called to report it missing) We had had to scrap our Catalina trip in order to do our own search, which encompassed my sailing all the way down the out- side break wall of L.A. Harbor to Long Beach, then ran a “zig zag” pattern up the inside of the harbor back to San Pedro. Scanning all horizons we were unable to locate the dinghy that had somehow just vanished within the time frame of 15 minutes max. I repeatedly called the Coast Guard to see if there had been any reports and found that there had not. The Coast Guard advised that I, “report it stolen in that someone, under these circum- stances, must have retrieved it with- out any intention of notifying us (Coast Guard) or Port Police.” He went on to say, “Unfortunately there are individuals out there that would take advantage of some- thing like this if there is any tangi- ble value to the vessel.” I spent the entire next day driv-
ing around all of the Los Angeles and Long Beach Marina areas to see if there was any sign, without any luck. I was absolutely sick about it. Then, Aug. 4 I get a call from my slip neighbor that the pumpout service guy had spotted the dingy tied to the dock at the
22nd St. Landing, right there in our own marina! How could I have missed this? I had driven by there and gone by there on my boat the day that this happened and saw nothing. So I jumped in my car and darted down to the dock at 22nd Street and, sure enough, there it was! I saw nobody around and fig- ured I might as well just jump in, fire her up, and get her back! In doing so, I immediately discovered that the fuel tank was missing. At the same time, I hear from a guy now standing in front of the tackle shop, “Hey...what are you doing?” I walked up and explained that this was my missing dingy and that I had been searching for it over the past two days. I added that I had reported it to both the Coast Guard and Port Police. I was somewhat shocked at the “new” attitude of this man who now decided to come at me with, “You’re not taking that boat anywhere”...”Uh...excuse me?” He went on to claim, “How do I know that this is your boat? Do you have any paperwork to prove that this is your boat?...You can’t just take that
boat...the captain of the Monte Carlo found it
adrift...towed it in here on Sunday”...
Ok...my immediate thought was this: First of all, the captain of a commercial fishing vessel finds a boat adrift, unoccupied, and doesn’t report to the Coast Guard or anyone else that there is an
See COMMENTS page 21 Fast Facts Cal Boating reported there were 716,885 pleasure boats registered in
California in 2014. More than 99.5 percent of those boats — 713,645 — were registered in one of California’s 58 counties. The remaining pleasure boats within California last year were from out of state. Only one county — Los Angeles — was home to more than 10 per-
cent of registered recreational boats last year. Below is a look at the 10 counties where most recreational boaters registered their vessels in 2014.
County
Los Angeles San Diego Orange
Riverside
San Bernardino Sacramento Contra Costa San Joaquin Santa Clara Alameda
No. of rec.
boats registered 85,267
52,810 50,534 41,458 39,843 36,719 29,359 21,898 20,622 19,647
Percentage of total registered rec. boats
11.9 7.4 7.1 5.8 5.6 5.1 4.1 3.1 2.9 2.8
Notable counties not in Top 10: Fresno (18,686); Ventura (18,552); Santa Barbara (7,827); and, San Francisco (3,207).
Source: Cal Boating
Rules of the Road apply to commercial, recreational vessels By David Weil, Esq.
Q
My wife and I own boat that we keep at a marina in San
Pedro. We are in the middle of a large port and, as such, we seem to encounter commercial traffic whenever we take the boat out. I usually operate under the policy of “tonnage rules” and try to stay out of the way of all commercial traffic, but I’m sure the actual Rules of the Road are a little more com- plicated. Can you shed some light on the formal rules for operating a recreational boat in an area with heavy com- mercial maritime traffic?
week I participated in a Port and Waterways Safety Assessment (PAWSA) work- shop conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard. PAWSA work- shops provide a formal struc- ture for identifying risk factors relating to maritime safety
A
This is actually a very timely question from our reader. Last
within a port and evaluating potential mitigation measures through expert input. The Coast Guard has conducted 50 workshops around the coun- try since 1999, and the find- ings and recommendations derived from the process have increased port and harbor safety substantially.
One of the most significant
risk factors identified by the panel of experts in the PAWSA workshop was the interaction between commercial and recreational traffic within the port. To be blunt, the com- mercial maritime community is concerned that recreational boaters don’t understand or appreciate the catastrophic consequences that would inevitably result from an encounter with a large com- mercial ship.
The simple answer to our
reader’s question would be to refer him to a previous install- ment of this column (See “Recreational sailboat vs. tug- boat with barge: Who has the right of way?” The Log, November 6, 2013). We noted
in that discussion that the Rules of the Road apply equal- ly to big ships and small boats and that a thorough under- standing of the Rules is critical to the safe operation of any boat. But collision avoidance often extends beyond a knowledge of the Rules. Large ships are seriously limited in their maneuverabil- ity and in the ability of the bridge crew to see a small ves- sel. A container ship has a “blind spot” where the bridge crew cannot see the surface of the water ahead of them, and that obscured area may extend for a half-mile. The crew must therefore evaluate the likelihood of a collision well in advance. This is a com- plex exercise in a crowded harbor, even when the sur- rounding traffic maintains a predictable course and speed. But small craft are often unpredictable, and this com- plicates the collision avoid- ance process considerably. The risk of collision is
reduced substantially for com-
On Board With Johnson by J.R. Johnson See ATTORNEY page 24
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