As John Gill said, sounding your horn will just cause them to wave at you. I have encountered horn signals only a few dozen times in my life. The average boater is clueless of their meaning. Do you really want to even bother with horn signals when it means entrusting your safety to someone clueless? I'm located in the middle of a dredge site so I encounter large tows in narrow channels every time I go out. They all know me, so they radio me instructions such as "one whistle" or "on the one" and I take the appropriate action. They don't bother doing that with most other boats because they know better. Coupla years ago, i was nearly run down by a dredge tow in the dark a hundred yards from my dock. That incident really terrified me. The resulting meeting had a dozen groups represented ... including state agencies, federal agencies, environmental agencies, General Electric, and GE's various contractors. You should have seen their jaws drop to the floor when I told em they were running huge tows in the dark without lights. The reaction when the tugboat captains confirmed my statement was even more interesting. Moral of that story, ya can't even trust the commercial tows to do what they're supposed to be doing. The only safe course of action, is to indicate your intentions long in advance, perhaps by heading far to one side of a channel half a mile before you meet the oncoming boat and make it extremely clear. In spite of that, I have had a few dummies ignore the obvious and still try to pass me on the narrow side with no room at all. One of them even ran over a buoy and then screamed at me for some imagined right-of-way violation, as we passed. Once on the way home from the Macy's Fireworks, some drunk tried to force me to turn into a dead end channel by aiming his boat right at my side as he came up behind me, screaming at me that the channel turned here. It didn't. I managed to get out of his way and let him go up the dead end, and he's probably still there stuck in a maze of pilings and wrecks. Never trust the other guy. Expect them to do something stupid, and plan on getting out of their way. Don't earn a headstone in the cemetery that says "He Was Right". Fred Tug 44 ---------------------------------------- From: "John & Judy Gill" <jjgill@twojscom.com> Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2012 4:34 PM To: "Rich Gano" <richgano@gmail.com> Subject: Re: GL: A royal screw up in COLREGS citation Rich, Vance and List, We have taught the Inland Horn Signals for the Power Squadrons basic safe boating courses for years. Students have always had a hard time remembering the signals, because they are so infrequently used. Also when you sound your horn or whistle, you normally only cause someone to wave at you! x--- snip ---x