Port and Starboard Confusion Results in Sailboat Circling Same Buoy for 45 Minutes

A 30-foot sailboat crewed by four adults with a combined total of one weekend sailing course spent 45 minutes circling a channel marker buoy in Chesapeake Bay on Saturday after the skipper issued helm commands using port and starboard and no one aboard could reliably identify which was which. 'I said come to starboard,' recalled skipper Dave Boom, who completed a two-day introductory sailing course in 2023. 'Jenna turned left. I said no, starboard. She turned left again. Then I said right and she said I thought you said starboard.' Crewmember Jenna Tiller confirmed the confusion. 'He kept switching between left, right, port, and starboard,' she said. 'At one point he said hard to port, which I thought was left, but then he pointed right. I just started spinning the wheel until we were going somewhere.' The somewhere they were going was in circles around a green channel marker, a trajectory noticed by the Coast Guard station at Point Lookout, which monitored the vessel for approximately thirty minutes before dispatching an inquiry. 'We asked if they required assistance,' said Petty Officer Sarah Helm. 'The skipper said they were fine and just doing man overboard drills. There was no one overboard. They were just confused about directions.' The fourth crew member, identified only as Todd, attempted to resolve the issue by taping labels reading 'PORT' and 'STARBOARD' to the corresponding sides of the cockpit. This worked until the boat changed tack, at which point Todd asked whether port was 'still port when you're going the other way.' 'Port is always port,' Boom explained. 'It's the left side of the boat when you're facing forward.' 'But what if you're facing backward?' Todd asked. The crew eventually abandoned verbal navigation commands in favor of the skipper physically pointing in the desired direction. They returned to the marina without further incident, though the docking procedure reportedly took twenty minutes and involved contact with two neighboring vessels.