Standing on and Giving Way

There is a kind of corny truism that if you don’t change your course, you’ll end up where you’re headed.

By Scott Alumbaugh
Published: January, 2007 

I thought about this often some years ago as I rode the Larkspur ferry to work. On the one hand, I had recently left a job in Los Angeles, and traded in a torturous freeway commute for this daily cruise across the Bay. On the other hand, I had only traded one financial district for another, and was still practicing law, which would, at best, lead to partnership. At the time, that did not seem like such a rewarding place to end up. So, I had a lot to ponder on those cross-Bay rides.

Despite loving the water, I have always been prone to seasickness. So I rode outside, even on cold, wet, winter mornings. And the thing I remember most about those mornings was not the cold, or the wet, or the rocking of the boat if it was particularly stormy, but the ship’s horn. If you have ever been on deck when a San Francisco ferry blasts its horn, you know why: it is loud and it is deep and plangent. It sounds like it is thumping your chest from the inside trying to break through your ribs to get out. On foggy days, the ferry would blast its horn all the way across the Bay.

Which can really interrupt your thoughts.

And I remember one time, on a perfectly clear afternoon, when out of the blue the ferry horn blasted five times in quick succession. Nearly knocked me off the boat. I looked around to see a power boat crossing our bow. And it was close, but not that close. I couldn’t understand why the captain was so cranky about it.

Seems funny, now, some twelve years later, to remember that horn blast so well.

It is another truism that if you can sail on San Francisco Bay, you can sail anywhere. Most of us take that to mean if you can navigate Bay sailing in thick fog and strong currents, conditions elsewhere will seem mild by comparison. But the Bay has another challenge most sailors don’t have to face very often — traffic. And it was only after I changed my career path and started teaching sailing that I gained an appreciation for those loud ferry horn blasts.

One of the first lessons in sailing has nothing to do with steering the boat or trimming the sails. It is much more basic. You have to learn how not to run into other boats. That is, you need to know the rules of the road.

It turns out that for every situation where one boat might possibly hit another there is a rule. The mandatory horn blasts of that ferry underway in fog (one 4-6 second blast every 2 minutes) are as prescribed as the sound a 24 foot sailboat has to make while anchored in fog (ringing bell for 5 seconds every minute). And the five blasts at that powerboat meant, according to the rules, that the ferry captain was in doubt whether sufficient action is being taken by the other [vessel] to avoid collision.

The reason for the captain’s doubt is that most rules of the road require one vessel to hold its course, or stand-on; the other vessel is required to alter course, or give way. The power boat was crossing the ferry boat’s bow from left to right, and as in a car, the vessel to the right – in this case, the ferry – is the stand-on vessel. The power boat was required to alter course, and failed to; which, considering it was going up against a 90-ton ship, makes that failure stupid as well as illegal.

Now, when learning the rules of the road, most students refer to the stand-on vessel has the one having right-of-way. And that is true. But the stand-on vessel is actually referred to as the burdened vessel — the one that has fewer options. It has to hold course until collision is more or less immanent. It’s kind of like continuing on your career, or life path, until you have to change course to avoid whatever is coming at you in a way that is not taking sufficient action to avoid collision. So, as you ride across the Bay, in between the blasts of the ferry horn, you might ponder right of way, being burdened and ending up where you’re headed.