Here's the situation:

In a race, I've rounded the leward mark and I'm heading to weather with an A cat very close to leward. There's a small (~12') aluminum boat ahead of me that is motoring about dead upwind. On my point of sail I'll pass ~10' off his transom. I hold my course.

When I'm very close, I realize the boat has lines in the water - the poles are laying down in the boat, which is why I couldn't see them. I can't bear off because of the A-Cat, and it's too late to tack. My crew and I are on the wire, and there's not enough time to pull the board.

So I hold my course and pass ~10' behind it. I snag a couple of lines, and one of the poles goes overboard. There's an man and four young kids in the boat. The man immediatly starts yelling obsenities at me, saying things like "Get back here ***hole, you owe me a new ****ing fishing pole". I continue on, finish the race and head in to the beach.

Shortly after I reach the beach, the boat comes in to shore, the man gets out, walks up to me and starts yelling in my face about how I nearly killed his kids and owe him $250 to replace his pole. I stay calm, but can't get in a word edgewise. He's yelling obsenities very loud, and there's many other racers on the beach looking on. After about 5 minutes of this, three other racers step in and basically tell the guy he's right and I owe him for his gear. One offers to pay him for it if I won't.

At this point I feel like I don't have a choice, and my crew writes him a check for $250 (I left my checkbook at home), although I seriously doubt his rig was worth more than $30. He's still pissed off and demands that I apologize to his kids, which I refuse to do.

After he left, there was no shortage of other folks who witnessed the confrontation who told me I was in the right and they never would have paid. Unfortunately, no one I knew was present and no one else was willing to stick up for me when it would have made a difference.

So, what would you have done if you were in my place?

What would you have done if you were a fellow racer on the beach?

We constantly have fishing boats on our lay line near marks with lines cast a long way out in all directions. You just don't know where the lines are until it is too late. I have personaly taken out a few as with other club members with fisherman screeming. None have approached me afterwards.

Don't know what the solution is. Don't think the fisherman quiet understand.

We'd still be fighting.

I'd honestly say that 10 feet is too close to another boat not involved in the racing, IMO.

If you were approaching the boat at an angle from astern you may also have been considered to be overtaking, in which case you must keep clear.

Keep in mind here that the boat in question would not meet the definition of a fishing vessel, but...

We're all out there to have fun. Common courtesy should rule in this case. Now there is one adult and two children who believe the worst of the sailing community, only to have confirmed later on the beach. If it were me, I would have tried to figure out a good payment and I would have apologized profusely, and offer to buy the guy a beer and his kids some ice cream. I would hope for the same if the roles were reversed. But maybe that's just me.

But, again, I think 10 feet was too close, fishing lines or no. I would have tacked earlier, or called for room from the A-Cat. Also, and we keep forgetting this, it is a perfectly viable option to release the sheets and stop. If you had time to raise the boards, you had time to stop or slow significantly.

In the start sequence of last Tuesday's race I tried to carry the spin high enough to clear an anchored boat. I ended up snagging his anchor line with the boards, and torqued his boat. Fortunately things were slow enough that we could fend off. I apologized, he said no problem, end of problem. If he said he had dropped his steak dinner in the water I would have offered to buy him one after the race. It was stupid of me to be so close to somebody who was not involved in the race.

And now for the humorous - a couple of years ago the finish to the C-100 was in the dark at Sandy Point. The committee strobe wasn't very visible compared to the group of fishermen's set up 25 yards south. They lights, and coolers, and lawn chairs, and a bunch of lines in the water. A finishing boat (to be nameless here...) saw the lights, thought it was committee, heated up and did a Worrell finish right in the middle of them. Fortunately nobody was hurt, during the incident or in the moments following - lots of apologies went a long way to healing bruised feelings.

Sorry for the long tomb. This is all just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

OK - I'm down with being courteous and all ... but is the small fishing boat really a burdened vessel such that he no longer needs to yield ROW to a sailboat? Note that the poster said the fishing boat was under way - not anchored. If the boat in question was moving and it was impossible to tell that the guy was trolling anything until too late, I wouldn't feel that bad about having snagged a line...certainly not $250 bad. Based strictly on the information presented here, I would offer him to split the cost of the rig and if he didn't like that, I would offer to file a claim with the waterway folks and let them decide (DNR, Coasties, etc.).

Secondly, if his poles were so poorly restrained in the boat, what the hell was he going to do if he actually hooked a fish? That guy is likely at home laughing with his buddies about how he got $250 out of that sailboat guy (in front of his kids).

this kind of reminds me of the situation Trey and I had with the parasailing boat off of west palm during the Tybee.

We had established a course to stay clear of the parasail boat, it changed course and crossed in front of us with less than 50 feet to go, we were balls-out flying downwind... only thing to do to avoid entangling a parasailer was to crash-gybe and capsize to be sure to keep the mast out of the tow-line (which was very low to the water since the parasailer lost speed and therefore altitude).

Tempers were hot on our side but really there was no recourse other than to swallow our pride, right the boat, and keep going.

Its unfortunate that the fisher wasn't aware of the rules of the road. (And poo-hoo if they consider a trolling fishing boat "encumbered")

I'm down with being courteous too, but the guy was screaming at me from the get-go and demanding an exorbitant ammount of money.

If he was calm and asked for $30 (which is more than what his other three poles appeared to be worth) I would have given it to him and apologized. As it was, that didn't appear to be an option.

This post brings up an interesting topic, fishing boats (recreational) often have trolling lines in the water for quite some distance behind them. Are these boats required to fly any type of signal to alert other boaters that they have lines out? If not, who is actually at fault if a another boat comes into contact with these lines after passing a "safe distance" behind and damage occurs to either boat?

Let me get this straight. A small motor vessel, trailing fishlines, is motoring right through a sailboat race course just upwind from the leeward mark ?

And the guy thinks he has got any rights ?

He pretty much abused you into pay but I can fully understand you gave in when some of your fellow sailors started to support this guy. An ugly story indeed.

Personally I would just have stopped and put in a slow tack, taking the hit in racing the A.


Actually we had a similar story in our club race last sunday. A sailing yacht was admiring the bunch of beach cats, all tightly grouped at a particular spot and wondering what those big orange bouy were doing in the water. And the yacht was moving along in a straight line nicely when the horn sounded and about 10 beach cats came screaming at it at about 10-14 knots speed. It continued on as it appeared that all the cats would pass it just a stern. Of course the course was perfectly along the coastline and only some 500 meters out. The yacht had to tack sometime or risk grounding. It tack right before the windward mark and starboarded the whole middle and rear pack of the racing fleet almost right on the mark.

At those situations you can hear racing crews yell :"hold you course !" and see them screaming passed the boat on both sides.

Now mishap happened but this particular yacht will remember next time what big orange bouys mean.

Wouter

If this was a weekend regatta. Where were the mark boats?
One of their jobs is to let power boats know what is going on and keep them away from marks and lay lines.

Unless he had a Bassmaster camera crew near by and a Triton boat there is no way he would have gotten $250. Maybe $50 for pain and suffering if he had acted civil.

I always used to think that fishing rods used to float ?


Wouter

I thought most did too except the heavy duty off shore ones.

I've done the same thing before. Passed to close to the stern of a fisherman and snagged his line. All he lost was his lure though. I apologized but he continued to chase me and shout obsenities. I learned a lesson that fisherman on inland lakes really do troll for fish. I had no idea people trolled on inland lakes prior to that event.

Having learned that lesson I probably would have tacked in your situation as it just isn't worth taking a chance. However, when you did catch the line and saw the pole drop in the water you should have stopped racing and gone over to apoligize in my opinion. I would have worked it out right there on the water if possible. If he was angry and yelling obsenities while I apoligized I would have turned around and sailed off.

Still I doubt if I would have given the guy $250 for the pole if it wasn't a deep sea rig or something. But I'm not up on my fishing prices. My guess would be in the $100 range for an average pole and reel.

the question now is what will you do if confronted with the same situation in the future? my years of experience have taught me to avoid conflicts no matter who has the 'right of way'. its possible to anticipate problems if i remain observant and realize its 'just a race'...stay clear and sail fast!

Remember I said that he did not fit the definition of a fishing vessel, and he probably didn't think so either. Some people in these cases try to make that point.

He was a motor boat, you're a sail boat, but you're a high speed sail boat. I'll bet the speed of the cat exceeded the speed of the fishing boat. A fast cat flying up on some guy dragging fishing lines with his two boys in a skiff (maybe I'm making the wrong assumptions on the fishing boat) is going to have a hard time justifying the "I'm a sailboat" thing IMO. Again, depending on the angle from astern, it may have been an overtaking situation where you become burdened whether under sail or power. Would he have been able to gun the gas to get out of the way in time? Was his boat even capable of that? I don't know. Even if he hit the gas the lines probably still would've gotten snagged. I still think 10 feet is too close to be to a non-participating boat.

He was probably pissed enough that maybe the cost of the gear went up to make his point. And part of him being pissed was probably him believing he was being buzzed. Maybe the rod that was lost was his best rig, and the others were just crap from the garage. Maybe it was favorite handed down from his Dad. Who knows? Give people enough room on the water and you won't have to find out.

There are still a$$holes out there. One Lighthouse Race I gave a guy that was anchored a wide berth. He pulled his line up, went to the bow, and gave a mighty effort to cast the line across my bows. Had I cut it too close he would've got me. As it was I needed to round up.

My $0.02

The incident was regrettable until he went berserk. Then it became a legal issue.

His remedy lies in the courts, it is a civil issue.

Getting in your face is an assault, a criminal issue. One of you should have called the cops. Or whipped his butt, or both.

I wouldn't have paid him anything. If he was paying attention he would have realized that there is a race going on..

That fisherman was a jerk, plain and simple. The foul language was reprehensible. He over reacted in every way, and worst of all he gave his kids a really poor lesson in how to handle a difficult situation. He probably shouldn't have been sitting in the middle of a race course and would have had better luck fishing in another part of the lake, but... As somene pointed out, we're all out there to have fun. The racing rules point out that the fishing boat is an obstruction. You could have called for room from the other competitor, but with navigable water all around the fishing boat the responsibility is yours to avoid him. With lines in the water, he is the burdened vessel, even though it's not clear where or how long his lines were, or that he was fishing at all. Looking at it from a slightly different scale. If you were at sea on Playstation and crossed within 50-feet of a long-line fishing boat and snagged its line, you'd be writing a check for a lot more than $250 of lost gear.

Despite the fisherman's bad attitude, lack of character and poor parenting skills, I think he was probably right.

next time I go sailing, I'm gonna take a piece of fishing line, and a hook, tie it off to my stern, and call myself a burdened vessel. :rolleyes:

For added context, this was at a long, narrow lake that is very sailing oriented, and a relatively famous racing venue.

The incident occured at the narrowest end, where it is ~ 200 yards wide. The fishing boat was ~ 50 yards from the shore. I was approaching him from the shore-side. When I fouled his lines I was more or less perpendicular to his course.

If I had realized that there were lines in the water, I would have tacked although I would have had to tack back very quickly and I'm not sure I could have cleared his bow after the second tack as he was motoring upwind.

I guess I could have slowed up, ducked the A Cat and bore off but as the lines were right on the surface I would have had to go dead downwind to clear them once I realized they were there. In that case the A Cat would have been the one to foul his lines.

With fore-knowledge, I could have ducked the A Cat and tacked early on the first leg after the mark, but that would have sent me into the traffic heading downwind to the mark.

Of course if I was a motorboat I could have just gone in front of him. There are reasons that sailboats have rights over motorboats, and it's not just about speed.