First night at sea under way

[John Arton]

With posts mentioning the landing stage at Liverpool, this reminded me of my short time on the Empress of Canada. As the old landing stage was not considered to be part of the shore, according to the COLREGS, whilst alongside we had to keep sea watches and display nav. lights for a vessel under way but not making way. Is this the casll with the new g stage?
Passing the ro-ro terminal on the Birkenhead side on my many trips to the MSC, the ferries there always left all their NAV. lights on but I guess that was most likely down to ignorance or laziness. I would have thought that those ferries were "made fast to the shore" as per colregs as permanent mooring dolphins were piled into the seabed for their mooring lines (tried to get rid of one when they were building the terminal whilst we were docking in Birkenhead in a gale but only scraped some paint off). On the original landing stage the mooring ropes went to the stage so we were not classed as being made fast to the shore as the stage was not permanently made fast to the shore.
rgds
JA

[Neville Roberts]

my first trip was not realy to sea as I joined the forester Harrison boat ,and sailed on my first trip too Manchester up the canal as a pantry boy , after that we were o our way too east afrika mombassa and dar es sallam wow was I impressed with myself the start of my great adventure . scrubbing alley ways on my hands and knees and loving every minute ill I got back and told my shoreside mates about the mud huts in mombassa. and the wild times we had . poor buggers were in 9 to 5 jobs .