I was really surprised when a friend recently elected to follow me as we cruised to a local eatery.  He knows more about boating than just about anyone I know, so the fact that I had been to the place three years ago didn’t seem to justify his faith in me, but I was flattered and agreed.  So we joined up outside of Rock Hall Harbor and headed south.  It was a beautiful day, water calm and sun shining brightly, with no wind to mention.  Seemed to me that we were going to have a nice outing.

About halfway to the Bay Bridge, that’s the William Preston Lane, Jr. Memorial Bridge, in case you missed my piece on the span, my friend came up on the VHF and asked if I was watching the car carrier steaming south about 4 miles to our starboard.  I allowed that I had it in sight and was working on a route that would get us around it without having to cross its wake too close.  We continued south, and as I had said I would, I figured that before we got much farther down the Bay I would angle west and get myself and my friend on the other side of the massive ship.

I did just what I planned and felt good about it.  We now had no worries about the ship and were within a few miles of our destination.  Just about that time I looked back—I’d been checking on a regular basis, and my friend had diligently been a half to a mile behind, bearing right down my stern—and couldn’t find the boat that was supposed to be following me.  Scanning the waters around me, I was surprised to suddenly find that my friend had veered off to the east and clearly intended to follow a different course to get around the ship.

Again, the captain of the other boat is far more experienced than I am, so there was no concern about his getting into trouble, but I was perplexed that he has opted for another course.  Well, to make a long story short, from this point on we took dramatically different routes to where we were going.  When we arrived, I asked him why he hadn’t followed me.  His response, “I had programmed in the coordinates before we left,” would have been great if my question had been “How did you get here?”  But that wasn’t my question.  My question was, “Why didn’t you follow me?”  In truth, my question was, “Why didn’t you do what we agreed you would do or let me know of your change of plans?”

I never got an answer to my question.  My friend clearly feels he did the right thing, and it isn’t a big deal that he chose to follow another route.  What is a big deal—I guess you could say, “The point I’m trying to make”—is that I was confused, distracted, less in control of the situation than I like to be.  Had I heard, “I’ll follow you for a ways and then break off when I’m sure where I am,” it would have been an entirely different thing.  Communication is important.  When my friend didn’t communicate, it caused a problem, and problems can cascade.  Stay in touch.  It goes without saying that you’re in command of your boat, but if you make plans with someone and then decide to alter them, let everyone know.