Following basic navigation rules can prevent most boat collisions

By Senior Chief Tom Rau, Coast Guard Group Grand Haven, Mi

Wayne Comstock of Wolverine Mutual, whose company insures a large number of recreational watercraft in Michigan and Indiana, told me that the majority of the company’s claims involve collisions with floating objects or other boats. According to the Coast Guard’s annual recreational boating statistics, over a five year period (1998-2002) collisions with vessels and floating objects, which includes swimmers and divers, accounted for 36 percent of boating accidents and 33 percent of injuries.

Those figures, however, depict only a small slice of the pie according to the latest Coast Guard Boating Statistics on recreational boating, which reports that only a small fraction of all non-fatal boating accidents occurring in the United States are reported to the Coast Guard, State or local law enforcement agencies. I believe this reporting shortfall holds especially true for recreational boating collisions. Unlike automobile collisions that often can draw a great deal of attention, that often cripple a vehicle, and often spark calls to 911, boating collisions often go unreported. When automobiles collide, fenders bend, tires explode, radiators rupture, and nearby objects including other automobiles may join the fray inflicting additional damage, not to mention personal injuries to those involved.

But when boats collide it takes considerable force to render the boat inoperative, especially damage to power boats, with engines located at the stern, and unless a boat is struck from behind where impact cripples the propeller, shaft or rudder the vessel can continue on. In most boat collisions, the shock is transferred to the water or the boat glances off on impact. And unlike car wrecks, residual damage to other boats or objects is rare. So, unless a personal injury occurs requiring medial response, boaters can, and I believe often do, go their way with little attention drawn to the ordeal.

Looking back over my years in search and rescue, I can not recall one official Coast Guard report of a hit and run collision. I did recently receive an e-mail from a woman reporting that her nephew was killed in a boating accident on September 1, 2002 on Wixon Lake in Gladwin County, Michigan. Reportedly, her nephew and his wife were returning to the family cottage when a boat traveling at a high rate of speed slammed into the couple’s boat, knocking her nephew into the lake, leaving his wife circling in a sinking boat. The operator of the other boat raced off. Divers recovered her nephew’s body 33 hours later. Authorities apprehended the offending operator the following day. Although authorities suspected alcohol and drugs were involved, the passage of time precluded testing the operator for alcohol.

Prior to that incident, the penalty for leaving the scene of a water related fatality in Michigan carried a 90-day misdemeanor sentence. Due to the diligent lobbying efforts by the family of the deceased, on December 03, 2003, the Michigan Senate, passed amendments to Bills 658 and 659 placing hit-and-run water related fatalities on par with automobile hit-and-run fatalities, making it a felony with a maximum five-year jail sentence.

Although alcohol does play a part in many collisions, failure to maintain a proper lookout and operating at unsafe speeds are still the leading causes. Rule 6, of the Navigation Rules , which addresses safe speed reads: “Every vessel shall, at all times, proceed at a safe speed so that she can take proper and effective action to avoid collision and be stopped with a distance appropriate to the prevailing circumstances and conditions.” These conditions include visibility, vessel traffic density, background lights at night such as shore lights, weather conditions, and depth of water.

Safe speed applies especially at night and in restricted visibility. It has been my experience that entrances to harbor mouths along Lake Michigan and channels leading into inland lakes often appear as dark voids at night, made worse by background lights that distract the eye. Under these conditions fishermen in small boats take great risks when they turn off their navigation lights, especially their all-round white light, in order to preserve batteries or veil their presence from fish. Often during patrols, I would come across these phantom boaters who instantly turned on their navigation lights when I lit them up with the flashing blue law enforcement light.

The fact that one boater is in violation of the law, for example our stealth fishermen, it does not necessarily exonerate a boater who runs into them at night. It brings us back to Rule 6- safe speed for prevailing conditions. If that rule doesn’t hold up in court, Rule 5 will definitely find attorneys flipping pages to: “Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper look-out by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate to the prevailing circumstances and conditions so as to make a full appraisal of the situation and of the risk of collision.”

During the summer of 2001, a recreational boat with another boat in tow struck two young adult males floating upon an opaque beach raft at dusk off the entrance to Leland Harbor, Michigan. For whatever reason, the boat operator didn’t see the raft. Perhaps he was distracted while towing a boat into a small restricted harbor with a nearby shoal extending out from a beach that lay a few yards off his starboard side. One victim received a slight prop-strike injury, the other, however suffered severe injuries. Although the court exonerated the operator under criminal statures, he wasn’t as fortunate regarding civil litigation. The case remains locked up in civil litigation.

Let me stress again In the event a boater should run down a unlighted vessel, chances are Rule 5 of the Navigation Rules would be their legal achilles tendon, unless they were “maintaining a proper look-out by sight and hearing as well as by all available means.”

Boat Smart- lookout!

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