Harnesses and Lifejackets and How to Use Them

Published Apr 11, 2013 70 comments Updated March 6, 2020

Phyllis Nickel at the helm of "Morgan's Cloud" during a sunny windy afternoon sail off Jonesport, Maine.

In this chapter I’m going to look at harnesses both separate and built into lifejackets. But before I get started I want to make one thing crystal clear. This chapter is not about what you should do. Rather I’m going to explore the way our thinking about harnesses has, and continues, to evolve.

My hope is that the chapter will inspire you to think carefully about your own practices, because this, like most everything about person-overboard prevention, is an area where (despite what various “authorities” may try to ram down our throats) there are few, if any, hard and fast rules that work in every situation.

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Book Chapter Navigation:

<< The Right Tethers To Keep Us Aboard—Part 2, Construction and Hardware

Person Overboard Prevention—Use of Climbing Harnesses >>

Meet the Author

John

John was born and brought up in Bermuda and started sailing as a child, racing locally and offshore before turning to cruising. He has sailed over 100,000 miles, most of it on his McCurdy & Rhodes 56, Morgan's Cloud, including eight ocean races to Bermuda, culminating in winning his class twice in the Newport Bermuda Race. He has skippered a series of voyages in the North Atlantic, the majority of which have been to the high latitudes. John has been helping others go voyaging by sharing his experience for twenty years, first in yachting magazines and, for the last 12 years, as co-editor/publisher of AAC.

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Nothing on this website or in direct communications received from us, or in our articles in the media, should be construed to mean or imply that offshore voyaging is anything other than potentially hazardous. Dangers such as, but not limited to, extreme weather, cold, ice, lack of help or assistance, gear failure, grounding, and falling overboard could injure or kill you and wreck your boat.

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