I have done a bit of yachting in my time, various places, from the Chesapeake Bay up thru Maine. When at the wheel (or tiller, same-same) you have to stay situationally aware. You need to keep track of wind direction, state of the tide, buoys, lighthouses, landmarks, other vessels. You need to know where your vessel is on the chart. You have to keep an eye on the radar. You have to stay in the buoyed channels lest you hit a rock or get stuck in a mudbank. As a 30-40 foot vessel you have to give right of way to the big steamers, who draw much more water than you do, and don't dare steer outside the buoyed channel. The big boys find it cheaper to just run down a yacht than pay for the tugboats needed to pull them off a sandbar if they were to leave the channel even for an instant.
So just how did those two Navy destroyers manage to collide with freighters? At what distance did the destroyer's radar pick up the freighter? Who was officer of the deck? How much real sea time did he have? When was a plot of the freighter's course and the destroyer's course made, and did it indicate a collision was coming? At what range did the lookouts see the freighter thru binoculars and report it to the bridge? What did standing orders say about avoiding merchant traffic? Were the destroyer's navigation lights burning? Had anyone on the bridge read Admiral Dan Gallery's book where he wrote "Steer well clear of any merchie, lest he decide to liven up your day by ramming you." When was any change of the destroyer's course ordered?
I haven't seen any discussion of the seamanship leading up to collision[s]. Probably the newsies are all landlubbers and don't know what to ask. And the Navy is embarrassed to say what went wrong.
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