I'm sure by now everyone has heard about the tragedy our region is suffering as a result of the container ship Dali colliding with a Key Bridge leading to the Port of Baltimore.  We are all heart broken for those who lost loved ones and for our community for the loss of the  bridge and the shipping channel, 2 major arteries pumping blood and oxygen into our region.

For decades, the Baltimore City YC has hosted 2 Saturday races (1 summer, 1 autumn) with courses starting at the Baltimore lighthouse (just north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge), up and around points north, then finally heading up the Patapsco River finishing in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

I have so many wonderful memories of sailing to her to and through her. We'd turn the corner at Mark-K and see her southern span poking around the corner of Sparrows Pt. She became our goal ... first getting to her by playing the shifts of the afternoon thermals and varied shoreline and shallows and next getting through her as current effects and wind swirls and shadows from her and Ft Carrol challenged our skills. Getting past her was really the start of a 2nd race to the finish as the shoreline effects of the ever narrowing river gave a new set of challenges.

So many great memories.

On to useful information .....

As a Chesapeake Bay sailor who primarily races in and around Annapolis, MD., being effected by shipping traffic, both moving and anchored, is very common.  If you use Google maps and zoom around Baltimore Light, you will see the satellite caught 2 ships passing each other. It's a very busy traffic way.

The local NOR/SI's of course have rules regarding avoiding commercial traffic.  When we encounter them underway in the main Bay shipping channel, they are moving > 20kts. The Dali was just just getting started at 10kts. 

The Dali-tragedy is a reminder of the awesome power that a moving vessel of this size and displacement represents. The New York Times just released an article discussing it and I thought it would be good to share with the community.  Maybe there is something here that might be incorporated into your training materials for both RC's and sailors as a demonstration of how difficult (and sometimes impossible) it is to slow, stop and turn these vessels when they are underway.

Below is a table from the NYT's article. It is truly hard to wrap one's head around the awesome kinetic energy stored stored by their mass and motion.

Below, my buddy Bill Carruth taking the longer windward high road in the 2020 Fall Series under the bow of the anchored ship.