Collision Averted

Spring winds are at once fluky and gusty on the York River. We observed a dangerous situation that got resolved by a puff of wind.

Helen and Jim Curtis of Finksburg MD went out on a brilliant sunny morning, where off in the distance we saw a big Navy ship heading from Chesapeake Bay into the York. It was the USNS Zeus, a cable-laying behemoth that has been deployed the last six months out in the Atlantic.

Meanwhile my dockside friend Chuck Shaffner was sailing his classic 1926 Herreshoff out of our marina into a light breeze. As the wind picked up he started to soar and eventually crossed upriver by going under the Coleman Bridge, where the Zeus was bound en route to Cheatham Annex. Chuck was unaware. We were roughly between the two.

As the Zeus turned in a bend of the channel and headed toward the bridge, I radioed my position and reported that I was proceeding north to get out of the way. Suddenly the wind died, so I had to fire up the engine to make my retreat. I turned and saw that Chuck’s wind died as well, leaving him stalled out under the bridge, directly in the way of the Zeus.

Quickly, I radioed Chuck but he did not respond. So I notified the ship, “Zeus, this is Deadline proceeding north. The other sailboat off your bow has no radio or engine and has stalled out. Be aware. It is not intentional.”

The Zeus captain calmly took that in and then tried to contact Chuck on his radio, to no avail. They were about 1,00 yards apart when a faint gust of breeze caught the Herreshoff and blew it off the center point of the bridge and out of the way. Before long Chuck was sailing toward us, safely.

The Zeus passed a river cruiser docked at Yorktown and chugged through the bridge. The radio operator thanked the Coleman Bridge operator as he started swinging the bridge back to normal. When Chuck sailed past us, he said cheerfully, “I heard a noise and looked up to see the bridge starting to open. I thought, ‘I didn’t ask for the bridge to open.’”

Back at the marina, Chuck executed his customary and flawless docking into the slip under limited sail with no motor. I asked him if he was going to tell his wife what happened. He thought momentarily and chuckled quietly, “No.”