Why do cruisers often put a swivel between their main anchor and the anchor chain rode?
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Congratulations to Mitchell Schlitt who correctly who correctly identified the burdened and stand on vessels in a possible collision encounter. “Under the Nav Rules, the vessel to starboard is the stand-on vessel and has right of way. Your vessel becomes the give way vessel and should be prepared to alter course to avoid interfering with stand-on vessel.” (Quite a few readers noted that a sailboat has a the right of way when encountering a power vessel. In a technical sense, this is true but in a real world encounter with a ship, you can be assured that the watch on the ship’s bridge will operate under the standard rules of the road and the skipper of the sailboat should do likewise. Several readers noted that it was important to know if the sailboat has it’s engine running. Again, this is splitting hairs, since the principle of “burdened” versus “stand on vessel” is the key rule to follow.)
