|
Tuna!
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Somewhere in the Canyon,Oregon
Posts: 1,589
|
Tickets due for unyielding boats
HENRY MILLER
Statesman Journal
March 17, 2004
You know that bumper sticker that says, “As a matter of fact, I do own the whole damn road”?
When it comes to commercial shipping traffic on the Columbia River, believe it.
The rule is pretty straightforward, said Dep. Dave Peabody of the Columbia County Sheriff’s office marine patrol.
“Legally as a boater, if a ship sounds on them — and that’s five short blasts on the horn — that sound implies imminent danger, and the ship’s captain is warning them to make way,” he said. Peabody recommends pulling up the anchor and moving. “Any boats that do not make way under those circumstances are in violation of state law.”
A criminal citation from a marine patrol deputy is $237, or up to $5,000 if the Coast Guard decides to take you to civil court on a federal violation, Peabody said.
“And they can be hit in both courts,” he said. “In other words, anybody I cite who goes into criminal court can be pulled into civil court, although commonly we don’t do that.”
The heart of the problem, he said, is salmon and sturgeon anglers who anchor in the shipping channel and won’t pull up and move for commercial shipping plying up and down the Columbia.
“This year it has come to such a point that we’re dealing with the Columbia River pilots, the local tug companies, all of us basically will be involved in getting this back under a handle again. It will be the Coast Guard and each neighboring county … it’s going to be a real united sort of effort,” Peabody said.
“As we’re starting to push this, it’s unfortunate, but we’re going to basically cite anybody” who is not in compliance.
The shipping channel is 600 feet wide on the Columbia, half for upriver commercial traffic and another 300-foot lane for ships going downriver.
In Columbia County that’s 65 miles of the Columbia River and the Willamette River mouth with shipping choke points and the major angler conflicts at Coffin Rock near Trojan, near Columbia City and Warrior Rock near St. Helens, he said.
Based on his experience, Peabody said it’s about a 50-50 mix of ignorance and arrogance among boaters who won’t budge.
“There are some who truly believe that they are not in the channel, and they don’t have the understanding that whether they’re in the channel or not makes no difference,” Peabody said. “If a ship sounds, they have to move, period.
“And there’s some who honestly feel that they (the commercial ship or tug pushing a barge) can go around. They went around me last time; they can go around me this time.”
This is a facedown that a fishing boat can’t win, he said.
“Your average little boat, your fishing boat, will range anywhere from 1,000 pounds on up to about 5,000 pounds,” Peabody said. “But these ships going through can be 100 (or) 200 tons.”
Sometimes, fishing boats can’t even be seen from the bridge.
“The river pilots have deckhands with radios, standing out on the edge of the ship, both sides, helping them because a lot of times they lose sight of the ships they think they’re running over,” Peabody said.
Some deep-draft supertankers have 40 feet of ship below the water line. Those massive ships have zero ability to turn and can take more than a half-mile to stop, he said.
It’s not just the fishing boat that needs to get out of the way.
“Another thing that boaters don’t do is pick up their anchor ball (or) pick up their anchor lines, and the ship simply winds them up on the propeller shaft,” Peabody said. “When you make way, don’t leave it floating in the path of the ship.
“My understanding is that anything within 50 feet of the propeller, that’s basically an area of suction, and that can be pulled into the propeller. So even if a ship goes along to the side of it, there’s still a chance it can get pulled into the propeller shaft.”
Enforcement officers and volunteers from groups such as Coast Guard Auxiliary have been and will continue to talk with boaters at launch ramps and on the river.
An education campaign is just getting going, but the problem has gotten so bad, and potentially life-threatening, that enforcement has become the big push.
“I kid you not,” Peabody said. “The message that I got off the machine right before yours was one of our local tug companies.
“And this guy was in the Multnomah Channel (on the Willamette River) right at the Columbia, and he couldn’t hardly get his barge through.”
Safety comes first, then commerce, Peabody said. And education will continue to be the preferred approach to writing tickets.
“We do not at all try to be harsh,” he said. “We do a lot of education before it becomes sort of zero tolerance, where we write citations.”
__________________
Have you kissed your wife, kids, Lab today?
WWW.MARFAN.ORG
|
1pump
People that don't adhere need to be cited! Maybe that will teach them and they'll learn the next time! [img]graemlins/berry.gif[/img] 
Linear Mode
