NavList:

>>if I think I was off course or even running late by 3 minutes I would, by reg, make a radio call to air traffic control ( even over the Atlantic ) and give a revised position.<<

I am astonished at this, John.  This level of control does not exist on the high seas, so far as I have seen.  It is up to the prudent small boat sailor himself to make notes of when, and from where, he expects to depart and when/where he expects to arrive.  He then gives this "cruise plan" to a responsible person ashore...most often a family member.  If you don't take initiative to do this, then you could get lost so bad you ended up in the wrong hemisphere, and nobody would be the wiser.

I'm quite sure commercial shipping lines keep close tabs on their vessels, but that is driven by corporate policy, and not national (or international) regulations and laws.

Now, once you get into confined waters near shore, things change a bit.  In the collision regulations (known as "ColRegs"), rule 10 talks about traffic separation schemes.  In so far as my sailboat is a) shorter than 20 meters, and b) vastly slower than one of these big, scary container ships, I try (in keeping with the ColRegs) to stay out of the lanes;  and if I have to cross a lane, I do so as nearly at a right angle as I can manage.

See attached graphic of the approaches to the port of Seattle.  You can observe several traffic lanes, separated by no-go areas.  The circles where multiple lanes come together are where you must simply adhere to the relevant ColRegs in every meeting situation.  If your navigation is so poor that you fail to adhere to the traffic schemes, and you are in Canadian waters, I suppose you might have a Coast Guard or RCMP vessel pull up and ask you what the heck you think you are doing.  So this would be the one area where the accuracy of your navigational fixes matters to other people...but you are not going to be using celestial at all in the context of in-shore navigation.

My wife and I were sailing once several years ago, and had just exited through Porlier Pass, in the Canadian Gulf Islands (between Vancouver Island and the mainland of BC).  We had a vessel with two guys in it come alongside and say "Excuse me.  What country are we in?"  The other skipper (though polite enough) was clearly a bonehead...but as long as he didn't cause a collision with another vessel, so far as I know he was not breaking any laws.

Bob

File: