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Eric, I must emphasise again that I am well aware that a fishing vessel engaged in fishing may well not be able to alter course, and that for her to do so could endanger gear, crew or boat.
That is not what I am talking about, however. I am talking about fishing vessels which for whatever reason make frequent and dramatic course alterations - by 90deg or more - in the course of their fishing activities.
Is is these sudden, unannounced and dramatic course alterations that can make keeping clear a difficult task. There is nothing a yacht can do to take account of this sort of rapid unannounced and unpredictable manoevering. If a lookout is not being maintained on the fishing vessel - for whatever reason - then a near miss or collision is possible in which the yacht has followed the rules, endeavoured to keep clear and is entirely blameless as it has in effect been run down by a faster vessel manoevering unpredictably.
It happens - more often than it would appear the fishing fraternity realise. Your assumption is that every time a yacht comes closer to you than you would like they have failed in their opbligation to keep clear under the IRPCS. My contention is that the yacht may have made every conceivable effort to keep clear but your vesel has in the course of her fishing activities manoevered directly into the yacht's path. The yacht may well be the slower vessel, in which case she will eventually be unable to get out of your way if you consistently make course changes that take your vessel
towards the yacht. (Irrespective of the direction she may be heading in).
Sometimes the end result is a stern chase, in which case the fishing vessel becomes the overtaking vessel and the yacht is relieved of her responsibility to keep clear. You would probably still be swearing at the bl**dy WAFIs for getting in your way - we can't win.
I am not sure what your VHF point was exactly, but I have found all watch officers I have spoken to speak adequate English - it is the general language used worldwide by ship to shore stations after all.
As far as using VHF to help avoid a collision goes, let me give you one example:
Crossing the Biscay shipping lanes at an oblique angle in poor vis and big waves we passed a block of flats doing over 20 knots in the opposite direction at a distance of between half a mile and a mile. I called them up on ch16 to enquire if they had seen us on radar. They had not, but confirmed that they had us visually now. I asked if there was any other traffic nearby that would pass close to us. They replied that there was a vessel five miles behind them that would pass very close, and they gave us the name of that vessel.
Ten minutes later we saw another vessel bows-on to us and I called them up by name on the VHF, said we had them visually directly on the bow and that we were going to alter course to starboard. They replied that they would also alter to starboard and we passed with a separation of a bit over half a mile. Once abeam I asked this vessel if they had us on radar, and again the answer was no but they had us visually now we were abeam. They said it was an interesting lesson.
Without the VHF call and with only our own avoiding action we would have passed very much closer to the ship, with no chance of getting out of the way should she make a sudden course change. The watch officer thanked us for the call.
Now, if that is bad seamanship in your book then so be it . . . but I will continue to call vessels in close proximity when I believe it will be helpful for both parties involved. I do not thingk that you can make sweeping generalisations about ship to ship calls on the VHF. I will however refrain from calling fishing vessels, as they obviously don't want to speak to yachties . . .
What I resent most of all about this is the general reference to 'amateurs' and the assumption that someone who puts out a line of creels in the same local area day after day is
automatically a better seaman than someone skippering a yacht who may have many tens of thousands of sea miles under their keel experienced in all sorts of waters and conditions.
(Not that I am putting you in the first category or indeed myself in the second category - the above was not meant as a personal comment, but as a general observation generated by the overall tone of your posts)
I have to say though that this is more interesting tonight than the sailing forum I also run . . . but don't worry the rest of you, I won't put any more sailing posts up here
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NickB
