Look out! It’s the water police

That’s how my first-ever encounter with water police ended; a slap on the wrist for not seeing the 50-foot-odd police launch bearing down on our transom at high speed while we pootled along on a family day trip, my teenage son behind the wheel of our 4.8-metre tinny.

I guess I’ve been lucky, having never had the water police drop in on me unexpectedly before, and likely because I’m mainly using enclosed inland waters, and sailing rather than powerboating or bombing around on a jet ski.

This particular day we were heading along an enclosed coastal waterway to one of the many channels, when the approaching launch sounded its klaxon for us to heave to.

My son was driving our 4.8-metre aluminium cuddy at the time. Earlier, we’d pulled up, checked no other boats were in sight, and given him the opportunity to jump behind the wheel while we motored slowly towards the channel marker – a nice, big visible target for him to aim for. After all, one day this boat is likely to be his.

At some point I noticed a boat about a good mile behind our transom, heading roughly in our direction, and thought little more of it as I was showing my son how to adjust the trim on the 60hp outboard engine. The next time I Iooked back, the police launch was about 20 boat lengths behind us, approaching our transom fast.

After we’d stopped, the police launch came up on our starboard side while a police officer took down my name and the boat’s registration details.

The launch then spun around so that the skipper could lean out the cabin’s window and audit the safety gear on the boat.

Because it was a family trip, I had already checked all the right gear was onboard the previous day. The flares and a floating torch were where they always are, in a waterproof grab bag below the cuddy. I’d replaced the torch’s batteries the day before even though the ones I replaced were only a few months old.

We ticked things off; paddles, fire extinguisher – we overlooked the bucket on a lanyard, but maybe he could see it in one corner of the transom from his high vantage point – as well as questions over whether our life jackets (which we were all wearing) had been serviced.

A habit I’ve adopted is to check each inflatable life jacket at the start of the boating season. This includes weighing the gas cylinder to check it still sits at 39 grams, and therefore hasn’t leaked, and then inflating the bladder and leaving it overnight to check for leaks before repacking them. Any cylinders showing signs of corrosion are sacrificed to the children, who fire off the jacket in an exercise that’s as educational as it is fun. I then write the date I performed the maintenance inside the jacket.

This was enough to satisfy him. It was after this, though, that things turned a bit awkward.

“When did you see us approaching you?” the police officer asked. I admitted I had not seen the launch until it was about 20 boat lengths away after last seeing it as a speck on the horizon.

“You know it’s your responsibility to maintain a proper look-out, including keeping a look-out for us,” he said. “We could have run right over the top of you if we hadn’t seen you.”

He also claimed that even while it was doing what seemed like four times our speed, the police launch had right of way as it came up on us.

“I could give you a ticket for not keeping a proper look-out, but I’ll let you off today with a warning.”

Yes, it’s a fair message, but delivered entirely the wrong way.

Under the rules, a vessel overtaking another vessel when the boats are in sight of one another must keep out of the way of the vessel being overtaken.

I know this, because I regularly race sailboats, where it is all about using the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (also known as the COLREGs) to make life as difficult as I can for the boats behind me – if the skipper of a faster boat wants to overtake, they’re going to have to do it the hard way by keeping clear of me as they try to go around.

Knowing the rules can be a huge advantage if you can force a competitor to suddenly and unexpectedly have to change course to comply with them. One of the sharpest insults you can hurl at a seasoned sailing rival you’ve just forced to yield is an invitation to “read your bloody rule book”.

The tricky bit here is what constitutes maintaining a proper look-out. According to the COLREGs: “Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper look-out by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate in the prevailing circumstances and conditions so as to make a full appraisal of the situation and of the risk of collision.”

The very next COLREG says that all vessels must travel at a safe speed to allow them to take action, if necessary, to avoid a collision. The police boat, as the give-way craft, had done that, slowing to five knots as it approached within 50 metres of our transom. But what if it hadn’t.

Yes, you could argue I should have been more aware of the boat, capable of a 30-knot cruising speed, coming up on me; but I was doing the equivalent of a fast jog along the edge of a marked channel with water to starboard that was too shallow even for our 0.6-metre draught, while the police vessel was hitting the equivalent of urban road speeds in open water to chase me down. That difference in closing speeds meant it went from being a shiny speck on the horizon to looming large over our transom in a very short space of time.

Was I deserving of a point-scoring pull-through for not maintaining a proper look-out? I don’t believe so, and neither did my partner. It also soured what had, up until that moment, been a crackingly good, safe family day out on the water, making it feel more like a privilege to be out on the water than a right.

The take-home lesson I received from the water police that afternoon was an old, familiar one delivered in the same cynical tone as a skipper who has forced me to suddenly tack: Read your bloody rule book.