[pirateofcapeann]

Thanks for your input guys. I’m sure that my fishermen friends will be interested in your answers, as am I.

Professional fishermen are out there to make a living, to put the food on the table and raise their children (who most hope will not become fishermen). They’re also so highly inundated with regulations pertaining to their industry that they have little time to be concern with that sailboat crossing their paths. Quite a few of these guys only speak Italian or Portuguese and their remembrances of boating regulations may come from their home countries!

I’ve witnessed near collisions between fishing boats coming home from a hard day’s work and sailboats beating up the harbor. The sailboater sees a vessel under power that should avoid him and so he stands on while the fisherman sees himself as a vessel engaged in fishing at all times and has the right of way over all pleasure craft.

I’d like to point out that I used the “pecking order” as a generalization to help make my point. We can discuss the “war” between the Party Boats and everyone else later!