Distance vs. Mata Hari?

It seems more people read this blog than just the Full Moon crew, though apparently not all are happy campers! During the Duck Dodge this week, one of the Distance crew hailed your faithful scribe to express some displeasure with a posting from back in 2009.

I confess I don't have perfect recall of the incident described in my post but Distance and Mata Hari had a side-to-side collision right at the finish line with Distance also hitting the finish line buoy. I implied that Distance was at fault for the collision. I'm reasonably sure both boats were on starboard tack with Distance to leeward, which would mean Distance had right of way and that Mata Hari should have yielded, assuming they had room to turn away. (Score one point for Distance).

However, rules 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 for the Duck Dodge also clearly and repeatedly state "No hitting one-another!" If Distance was sailing to leeward, they would have had the best opportunity to avoid a collision. Thus, I still feel pretty solid about laying some blame on Distance. (Score one point or more for Mata Hari.) There may be more to the story, of course, but from my vantage point, I simply called it the way I saw it. In my book, failure to avoid a collision is worse than failing to yield right of way.

Meanwhile, an attentive reader will notice a little symbol at the end of each posting with some text which typically says “0 comments” right next to it. Clicking the symbol or the text opens a dialog box to add a comment about the posting. I filter all comments before they can show up in the blog so as to avoid all kinds of potential troubles but I welcome any reader to make a comment, especially if they feel wronged by anything I’ve written. If the comment favors the profound over the profane, I will publish it. And if I’ve made a mistake (certainly always possible!), I’ll revise my posting accordingly.