The aircraft carrier USS Midway is about a 1,000′ long, 130′ wide and around 55′ high. It has been a stationary museum ship since 2004. Put plainly, Midway is really, really big and doesn’t move. It should be a fairly easy object to avoid, and yet for the second time in only three years, a sailboat has succeeded in running into it.  In both cases, the sailboats attempted to take a shortcut across the carrier’s bow and misjudged the height and extent of the ship’s safety nets.  

This time, the sailboat was dismasted in the process. In 2015, a passing sailboat got the tip of its mast entangled in the carrier’s flight deck safety nets, damaging the nets but leaving the sailboat’s mast standing. 

The good news is that these two allisions are the only such incidents since the Midway became a museum ship fourteen years ago.

Boat crashed to the USS Midway aircraft carrier museum in San Diego