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>entering channel on a tanker, pilot pickup is like an hour away so Capt needs to come up to the bridge and take the conn from me
>he comes up and sits in his chair, watching YouTube, hasn’t said a word to me (so I assume I still have the conn)
>channel is about 10 minutes away
>shrimping vessel turns to cross our bow while we’d be in the channel, ARPA is saying we’ll have a collision in 12 minutes
>not entirely sure who has the conn and the lookout is fucking off somewhere, so I just tell the captain “Um, Cap, we have a fishing vessel crossing our bow. In the channel, 12 minutes, zero mile CPA. Should I slow down?”
>puts his phone down and glares at me
I already have a rep onboard for being high strung (but I have never called him for any navigation stuff in the months I’ve been there, more have I had any major fuckups, worst thing I did was be a bit slow pulling up the spring line)
>”we’re not fucking slowing down. I’m up here for a reason. You think I want to be here? We’ll get through it.” Goes back to browsing his phone
>CPA doesn’t change
>start calling the guy on all the VHF channels, no answers, eventually VTS starts trying to call him too, nothing (what I expected, fishing vessels never have answered me and never seem to change course)
>5 minutes till collision, we’re now in the channel, capt finally puts phone down
>”don’t worry. He’ll alter course for us.”
>2 minutes till collision, shrimp cunt is right on top of us, he yells at me to sound the danger signal
>nothing
>vessel is right on the starboard beam probably 100 ft away when captain finally yells at the helmsman for a hard left
>nearly shat my pants
>later on the captain tells me it would be ok if the shrimping boat hit us because we had the right of way
How should I react to situations liek this in the future