Near Miss

We were toodling along out of Ormos Varko, the little beach we anchored off of and were going very slow … like 1200 RPM with Marina and I both lying down in the cockpit reading, occasionally looking up.

Marina heard this warbling – like a bird, I look up and there is a 40 foot boat sailing towards us and he’s about a boatlength away and we’re going to T-Bone them. I hop up, quickly turn off the Autopilot and make a sharp right turn to avoid a collision while simultaneously belting the throttle to get more wash over the rudder. We missed the other boat by 10 feet. I was genuinely worried that we were going to crash, and God knows I’ve been in a few in my racing days.

After the narrow miss my blood was up and I yelled; “While I understand port-starboard and power gives way to sail, that was the stupid-est effing thing I have ever seen anyone do!” – and then we put the autopilot back-on and carried on, looking up a little more frequently. Had we hit them mid-ships like we were going to they would have likely lost their rig and perhaps their boat.

Apparently according to Marina they stared back smirking … wow … had we been on a race course we would have been tossed for being wrong, and they would have been tossed for not avoiding a collision.

What could have happened...

While technically we were wrong for not keeping a lookout and avoiding them, why on earth would you ever put yourself in a position where you could have a collision with a 20 tonne yacht? A 2 degree course alteration by them 30 seconds before would have avoided this.  Or at least hail so we had some time to react … anything would have been better than that.

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I sincerely hope that upon refection the skipper of the other boat has a “that was dumb and I won’t do that again” moment. If not, I hope it tries it with a ferry next time … :)