
Originally Posted by
O2HeN2
"barreling" yhea, anyone with a video player can see it was hardly "barreling".
There's fault on both sides here. Yhea, the CG and LEOs were trying to clear a path, but other boats simply "filled in" the channel again behind them, leaving no way for the Spirit to make progress. There were also boats anchored in the navigation channel (illegal).
RedBull simply didn't keep the navigation channel clear, something they agreed to do. That was the root problem.
On the flip, the Portland Spirit shouldn't have pushed boats out of the way (note that the boat [singular, as far as I can tell] they it did come in contact with, people pushed off with their hands). But the Spirit wasn't going to get anywhere otherwise due to the uncooperative people in the channel.
Basically it was the typical wild party that got out of control with the typical drunk and/or mob mentality subset of folks actively causing a problem and then being outraged about the result.
O2 (used to sail a lot on San Francisco bay and knows the difference between legal right of way and right of way dictated by simple physics)