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Originally Posted by Gavia immer
Whether the cliff had a light or not, and whether the cliff was on a chart or not, the captain's responsibility to his boat and passengers is not to collide with anything.
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How far do you think this responsibility goes ? A cliff or other inanimate object can't have any responsibility, it (they) aren't alive. Thus the sole responsibilty lies with the captain. This isn't the case where other people are involved. They have the responsibilty to do their part, mostly by being visible. The captain's responsibilty is to see and avoid them. I brought up the question of a swimmer, extended to a dark Moonless night, to illustrate this. I think we can all agree that under such conditions the swimmer is invisible. If you want to argue the point, I'll have the swimmer swimming underwater. So what's a boat captain to do. If he has the sole responsibility to avoid such a swimmer then he better stay at the dock because I can pose the hypotheticals such that a collision is unavoidable. Most people would consider such restrictions to be unreasonable and that's what it comes down to. We have a 150' from shore, NWS rule because (in part) we expect there to be swimmers in that area. We don't extend that NWS rule to the entire lake to cover every possible swimmer because that's unreasonable. A snorkler
could surface just in front of your boat and at any speed onplane and below HB162 speeds, you might hit him. Yes he's supposed to display a dive flag but if he doesn't ... why it's like boating w/o a light at night. Does this mean because such a hypothetical situation might arise that no boats should be onplane anywhere on the lake ? That any captain onplane is not being responsible because of such a hypothetical ?
You have the responsibility to not hit things (people, other cars, etc) when you're driving. Yet there's always the chance that someone may cross the lines and enter your lane causing a collision. Does your responsibilty to avoid a collision mandate that you pull to the side of the road everytime there's an oncoming car ? No, because that's unreasonable.
In this case the kayakers didn't do their part. I've yet to hear anything that says the powerboater wasn't doing his part. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't but I'm giving him the same benefit I gave to the Hartman's when they said their lights were on. The kayakers did something stupid and almost paid dearly. End of story.