Re: are the tideway "safety rules" actually safe ?


gledders wrote:
So far so good. Unfortunately, new for 2006, all races were told to
race down the starboard side of the river (on an outgoing stream), ie
well over towards the Surrey Bank - at the same time, all rowing boats
coming up stream on the Mortlake stretch where the race is run, are
also on the Surrey Bank. So, all rowing boats are potentially in a
rather small part of the river. The width of this "lane" obviously gets
smaller as the tide falls, therefore reducing the gap between racing
boats going one way, and marshalling boats going up to the start the
other way.

Is it any narrower than, say, St Neots (where two crews race around
buoyed lanes through a 100 degree bend, while other crews come up a
very (?too) narrow navigation lane on the outside of the bend?

Or some of the races on the Cam where there are either narrow
navigation lanes (Autumn Regatta, unless this has changed) or crews
pulled in on the bank during races, or just narrow racing lanes (Sprint
regatta last weekend)?


In one race, I was on the Surrey station and was pushed way over by the
other crew on the Middlesex station. The Umpire obviously told the
other boat to steer to port, but in the heat of a race, this does not
always get an immediate response. My eyes were glued to the boats
coming upstram towards me, waiting for one to miss a stroke, or
overtake another boat, or to get too close to a shoal and steer out too
far etc etc.
I assume you held your station though as continued interference with
your course by the other crew would have resulted in their
disqualification? I also assume that your umpire was also aware of the
boats in the navigation lane and would have stopped the race and
ordered a re-row should one of the boats in the lane entered the racing
course. I have seen the latter happen at St Neots.

Any crew overtaking in the inshore zone should only be doing so when
the main fairway is clear - I agree that just knowing this fact doesn't
help you when you do get a bowball in the back though.

My own view ? - the slavish application (by the so called safety
police) of the so called Col Regs is putting a lot of us in danger, and
it is no good "being in the right place" when the bow person gets a bow
ball in the back, and you look over at all that open river to your left
being completely unused.

I love it when people use the words "so called". Seriously, when has
Chris George (who for those not from the area is the Regional Water
Safety Advisor) ever called himself the Safety Police? And the Col Regs
are the Col Regs (short for "Convention on the International
Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972" which is a
mouthfull).

But anyway. Obviously the other extreme is to go to an "open waters"
policy where anyone can go wherever they want, taking the shortest and
quickest course to where they want to be. But assuming we don't want
some sort of anarchy, we need a simple set of rules. But then we need
to agree those rules with the people who look after the fixtures and
fittings of the river, and the people who make money out of using it
(like the pleasure boats) and the people who pay to use it (like
commercial shipping) as I think they have more rights than people who
use it for free and don't contribute to its upkeep. So unfortunately as
rowers don't pay to be there, I think it's fair to do what the Harbour
Masters ask us to do.


Up the sides, down the middle - seems sensible to me ? Lets face it,
you are more likely to hit another rowing boat where everyone is going
backwards in a forced narrowish channel than hitting a large, very
visible pleasure cruiser with an engine, a person steering facing the
right way, and a loud horn to warn you its there. And, there are not
many of them either !!

Somehow they manage to cope with a "forced narrowish channel" on the
Cam, Isis, Ouse, Lea, etc... Seriously: once they get the buoy placings
right, the amount of water -at low tide - in the inshore zone and on
the right side of the Fairway will probably be as wide as these rivers.
Plus those in the Fairway have the luxury option of nipping over to the
left of the Fairway when they want to overtake a slower crew. The
amount of rowing traffic is probably similar to peak flows on those
other rivers, so congestion is not an extra issue here. So why can't
the Tideway users cope with the a low tide?

DB

.

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