Here is a little story....
King's Bay, allegedly a missile off load/on load in one of those big canopy piers down the river...
It is summer and hot as jungle monkey balls, greenhouse humid, and I am tired as hell...
And it is only 0945 and still I am drenched...I think my crows matched my shirt, that is how sweaty I was.
So I am carrying crap from A to B and I am carrying it on my right shoulder, so my line of site is obscured to my right as I am walking alongside the pier northward going to the Forward Escape trunk.
Before i picked up my box of whatever it is I was carrying, I noticed all the cute little Marines with their cute little M-16s walking around. I also noticed the yellow painted line that told me to stay on the other side, the side without the little Marine people, my side. My side was about 20 feet wide, it extended from the line to the office with all the other Marines sitting inside.
The exclusion zone was from the yellow line to the pier, across the water, and on to the missile deck.
The exclusion zone was about 4 feet wide.
Logically speaking it would make more sense to walk in the 20 ft wide free zone without the armed guards than walk in the 4 feet zone with the guy and the rifle, and grenades, and knife, and all the other stuff he was wearing in the blazing heat and stifling humidity.
Me being a Navy nuke, logic and reason was optional outside the Engineroom.
I began my journey in the free zone with the 50 pound box of COB or EDMC directed carry this crap to the boat, box.
What I failed to notice was that I was listing to the starboard. Apparently the extra 50 pounds of ballast was pulling me off course ever so slightly. It wasn't like I was making a snap turn to Starboard, more like a gentle turn, kinda like having a inattentive helmsman, scratching himself with the left hand, and trying to steer with the right, and just ever so slightly pulling down on the little wheel thing (I don't know coner terminology).
Now apparently no one on the pier was noticing me drifting to Starboard.
Or everyone was watching me and waiting to see what would happen next.
Assume I started 20 feet away from the little yellow line, about 200 feet from the forward brow.
Now, calculate the hypotenuse of my little triangle.
Assume I was walking at 2 miles per hour.
Let Side A = 200 ft.
Let Side B = 20 ft.
Let Side C= X
Let Intersection AC = the point where I would have safely stepped acrossed the brow.
Let the angle of the hypotenuse in relation to my origin 20 feet from the yellow line = the safe heading I could have maintained.
I will tell you that about 50 ft from the brow crossing, I heard something go clicky click and a cadre of muffled voices yelling at me, i say muffled, because I had a big box in my right ear and my left bicep was in my left ear as my left arm was flopped over my head supporting the box.
Based on the above information, determine the original safe angle and my actual angle of approach.