What is the passage mainly about?

In fog the captain trusts instruments and method instead of her eyes (Every part supports this: she distrusts sight, she names compass, chart and count, and she calls fear the wrong instrument.)

How long does the crossing take in clear weather?

Twenty-two minutes (The first sentence gives twenty-two minutes in clear weather. Two hundred seconds is the length of one heading, not the whole crossing.)

Why does Ruiz sound the horn?

To learn whether another boat is nearby (The horn is called a question thrown into the white, and the answer would be another boat. It is a way of finding traffic she cannot see.)

In this passage, a turn to port means turning toward

the left side of the boat (It appears with a compass heading as a steering direction, so port is the ship term for the left side, not a place.)

Fog On The Crossing: Level 3 Reading Comprehension Questions

The crossing takes twenty-two minutes in clear weather and anything at all in fog. Captain Ruiz had learned not to trust her eyes on mornings like this one, when the harbor lights turned into soft grey stains and the far shore stopped existing.

She trusted the compass, the chart, and the count. Two hundred seconds on this heading, then a slow turn to port. Passengers hated the sound of the horn, but the horn was not for them; it was a question thrown into the white, and the answer, if one came, was another boat.

A new deckhand asked whether she was ever frightened. Ruiz said that fear was the wrong instrument. Fear made people steer toward whatever they could see, and on a morning like this one, what you could see was the least reliable thing on the water.

Comprehension questions