A missing or mistaken COLREG display does not remove the bridge team’s duties under the 1972 collision-prevention convention. The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, usually shortened to COLREG, are a convention in their own right. A faulty copy, display or interpretation cannot replace the obligations that govern lookout, speed, risk assessment and avoiding action.
The practical response begins with the duties themselves. Rules 5, 6 and 7 require a proper lookout, a safe speed and the use of all available means to assess whether a risk of collision exists. Lookout and the available information support the assessment of risk; safe speed remains part of the conditions in which that assessment and the response are made.
From recognising risk to checking the result
Rule 8 requires collision-avoidance action to be positive, made in ample time and taken with due regard to good seamanship. It also requires the result to be checked until the other vessel is finally past and clear. The duty therefore continues after action is taken: the bridge team observes the result and keeps checking until the vessels have safely passed.
These rules do not supply one universal safe distance or a simple right-of-way table. The proper lookout, safe speed, risk assessment and avoiding action apply to the situation the bridge team is observing. This keeps the decision tied to the available information and the developing encounter, while Rule 8 supplies the standard for acting and confirming that the action has worked.
What Rule 9 asks in a narrow channel
A vessel proceeding along a narrow channel or fairway should keep near the outer limit on its starboard side so far as is safe and practicable. The rule also protects the passage of a vessel that can safely navigate only within that channel. A vessel under 20 metres or a sailing vessel must not impede the passage of a vessel that can safely navigate only within the narrow channel or fairway. A vessel must not cross the channel if crossing would impede such a vessel.
The test is navigational constraint, not relative size. A bridge team considering a crossing must ask whether it would impede the passage of the vessel able to navigate safely only within the channel or fairway. That question applies Rule 9 to the actual waterway and the vessel constrained by it, avoiding a size-based shortcut that the rule does not create.
