Now we know what happened when the captain of a high-speed Nantucket ferry crashed into a jetty at Hyannis Harbor on Cape Cod, Mass., at 9:30 at night, injuring more than a dozen people: Navigating by radar, the captain thought a metal pole and sailboats behind it were buoys marking a safe entrance to the harbor.
A report from the Steamship Authority says the captain logged the HH buoy correctly, marking the outer entrance to Hyannis Harbor, and then asked the pilot to light up buoy number 4 with the searchlight. The captain then checked the radar and saw what he thought were buoys 4, 5 and 6 and adjusted his course. But what he thought was buoy number 4 was really the metal pole at the end of the breakwater, about 800 yards north of the real buoy number 4.
At the time the breakwater was not visible on radar because eight-foot waves were washing over it. And what the captain thought were buoys 5 and 6 were actually sailboats, lined up in a pattern matching buoys 4, 5 and 6. For more:
http://www.wcvb.com/article/ferry-captain-mistook-pole-sailboats-for-buoys-before-crash/10229104
