The Offshore Voyaging Reference Site

We Should Focus On Staying Aboard, Not Recovery

JHH5-14602-Edit

Over the years I have attended a number of Safety at Sea Seminars, and even presented at a few. And I’m a great believer in their benefit for cruising couples, even though they are often associated with ocean races and focused on the safety requirements of that way of going to sea.

Having said that, these seminars spend a huge amount of time explaining the procedures for recovering a crew overboard (COB).  For the short-handed crew, that time could be better spent.


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Henrik Johnsen

I could not agree more.
It becomes more and more clear that the self deploying lifevests can have major drawbacks, unless one choose the very best ones, and always uses tigh straps. Are we about to swap safety for comfort?
I recommend to read the report of the investigation of a fatal MOB outside the coast of UK June 2011.
http://www.maib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/LionReport.pdf

Dick Stevenson

John,
Agree with above. We (almost always just the 2 of us) operate on the belief that if you fall overboard you are dead. This does not mean we do not do MOB drills and would not try hard to attempt the rescue, but the odds are just way against recovery. Staying attached to the boat is our first priority.
Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy

Marc Dacey

Man, I always get in after that *other* s/v Alchemy guy…

While we too run “retrieve the hat/lifering” drills every season, the principle of “stay with the boat” is a very important point to stress. I too feel the one Safety at Sea seminar I attended did not stress enough. I’ve always equated a tether and harness with a seatbelt. It’s possible to be thrown clear in a car accident and end up with only scrapes, certainly, but it’s vanishingly rare. Why roll those dice with the clearly indifferent sea?

Even when you can be seen, and if you have a working PFD, you can still be drowned or injured (further) by waves, or by your co-skipper smacking you with a boat, or that nice, sharp prop, or through breaking an arm trying, fruitlessly, to get aboard. All the slings, AIS-SAR devices and Super Laser Pointers in the world reduce the adverse odds only slightly that you will be safely recovered…particularly if we are talking a single, perhaps smaller, crew left aboard and a high freeboard typical of modern cruisers.

On an Atlantic delivery in 2009 with steady, fairly strong night watch winds of about 25 knots apparent, I was tethered to the helm, but was laying athwartships on the cockpit cushions, admiring the stars. Out of nowhere (and no, I was not asleep!), we were hit with a brief “clear-air” squall that heeled the boat about 35 degrees over. The cushion I was on, with me atop it, slid rapidly down. My sandaled feet were splashed with foam. The tether stopped me from sliding right under the lifelines.

I’ve been religious on this point ever since and have written about the fallacy that safety gear will do a whole lot more than prolong the agony should you leave the boat beyond the range of SAR resources and/or in anything more than a calm seaway. Staying safe means staying aboard. Comfort is the least of one’s worries if you are watching the stern light move off at seven knots. To pretend otherwise is the triumph of hope over logic.

That said, sailing around Toronto’s waters in the summer, I rarely use a tether, but rarely fail to wear my PFD. It’s a different proposition in crowded waters and fair weather, in my view, but making my kid wear a vest all the time meant his parents “bought in” to “always wear a PFD” logic, even on calm days.

Jacques Landry

Right on John.

The only way to survive is to stay in/on the boat! Water out there is generally cold, and you will quickly have no strength or abilities to even grab something thrown at you.

I teach diving, and always starts an OW course by saying that “The only safe dive you will ever do, is the one you don’t”! Same with sailing, the only insurance to get back on board safely, is not to fall in the first place.

How many people died because they were tethered to the boat and drawn ? Very few, always in races, always in unstable boats. I have read all these stories, they don’t apply to us cruisers. So, for the rest of us, a tether is the best insurance.

Hope you’re getting back on your feet and will be ready for the coming season! Although you must be buried under snow in the Atlantic provinces !?

Chris

A good USCG friend, who is not longer with us, once opined that the principal benefit of life jackets of any stripe offshore was body recovery. For him, offshore was a flexible term. In the winter months it started at the dock.

Chris

Yep, John, but it’s really hard not to suck in after screaming “Oh, S**t” (insert language of choice and amplifying expletives as desired)

Marc Dacey

I would like to read that research on freezing water. I’ve seen scientists dipped into frosty tanks in the lab, but I think falling off into an icy ocean would evoke a stronger reaction.

Given the shock of such an event, remembering to hold your breath is a big “if”. I was at the toerail on a Catalina 47 during a docking, and I was unaware there was a midship line beneath my foot. I was flung directly off the boat, went down about eight feet (the C-47 has a five-foot freeboard) and was shot to the surface like a hairy dolphin when my PFD went off.

I think I may have swallowed something at some point during that brief period. It was early June in Toronto. Temperature in the water, 15-16 C. Still felt pretty freakin’ brisk.