Page 81 - Collision Avoidance Rules Guide

necessarily terminate at the last of the buoys or objects marking the
channel. The narrow channel rule has been held to apply to the
passage between two piers and to 100 metres (yards) outwards
beyond the objects marking a harbour entrance. It was held not to
apply to a recommended route between two buoys where vessels
could have gone outside them in safety.
Passages approximately 2 miles wide have sometimes been
considered narrow channels. In considering the passage between
Duncansby Head and the Skerries in the Pentland Firth (Anna
Salen-Thorshovdi, 1954) Mr Justice Willmer said:
For myself, I certainly see difficulties in applying the ‘narrow channel’ rule
to a passage which is nearly four miles wide. I should hardly have thought
that ‘narrow’ was the word to use for this passage, for it is not a particularly
narrow passage.
In the Faith I-Zndependence (US Court, 1992) the passage
between buoys at the entrance to Delaware Bay, approximately
1.2 miles wide, was held not to be a narrow channel but it was
held that good seamanship and prudent navigation require that every
vessel keep to starboard if safe and practicable.
Rule 9 will apply to any narrow channel connected with the high
seas which is navigable by seagoing vessels unless there is an incon-
sistent local rule. It does not apply to lanes of traffic separation
schemes although such lanes may be relatively narrow. Vessels using
traffic separation schemes must comply with Rule 10.

Fairway

The term ‘fairway’ is generally used to refer to an open navigable
passage of water, or the channel dredged and maintained by the port
authority. Rule 25(a) of the 1960 Regulations required a vessel in a
narrow channel to ‘keep to that side of the fairway or mid-channel
which lies on the starboard side of such vessel’. The fairway has been
considered to be the deep water channel which may be marked by
pecked lines on the chart for use by large vessels (The Crackshat,
1949) whereas the term ‘narrow channel’ has been held to refer to the
whole width of navigable water between the lines of buoys.
(Koningin Juliana, 1973.)
Rule 9(a). This paragraph corresponds to Rule 25(a) of the 1960
Regulations but it applies to all vessels, not just to power-driven
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