
I have been writing a lot about safety lately: crew overboard, storm survival, fire at sea, and so on.
All important stuff. But I do sometimes worry about how this all relates to our primary goal here at Attainable Adventure Cruising, as stated on our homepage, of:
Helping you go cruising.
Now most people would say that writing about safety is part of that mission, and that’s true, but there is also another aspect, which Winston Churchill defined way back on 16th November 1943:
You may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman, or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together—what do you get? The sum of their fears.
He was pointing out that while each military adviser may be brave and decisive, they each have their own demons. And so if they are all in the same room planning an action there is a good likelihood that they will get mired by their collective fears and take no action.
The answer to this problem is the presence of a strong leader who holistically weighs the chances of success against the risks, cuts through that paralysis to order decisive action, and then takes responsibility for the outcome—in WWII that leader was often Churchill.
So what does this have to do with offshore sailing?
Never before have we boat owners had access to as much writing, and video, about safety equipment, techniques, and strategies as we do today.
Although that can be a good thing, it also exposes us relentlessly to “the sum of their fears”. To every:
- Blog writer’s bad safety-related experience.
- Marine journalist’s pet fear. (I will tell you about mine in a minute.)
- Tale of disaster on FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter and so on.
- Salty sailor’s hard and fast opinions, based on their own worst experiences, on what we must add to our boats and do at sea to be safe.
And here’s another important takeaway. We can’t arrive at action by trying to determine the validity of each fear, because many of them (maybe most) are valid.
Rather, each of us who skippers an offshore sailboat must be that decisive leader who filters all of that safety information to decide what’s important to our boat and intended voyage. Otherwise we will never leave the marina.
Easy to write, very hard to do, and yet the very essence of what it means to be a seamanlike skipper.
So how can we achieve that? Since each of us is different, I can’t give you hard and fast rules, but here’s how I have managed not to be paralyzed with safety fixation, but still skipper a safe (I hope) boat on multiple voyages, many to scary places like Greenland.
#1 Offshore Cruising is Not Dangerous
A mental trick Phyllis and I often use to fight down our own fears (we both have plenty) and avoid taking on too many of the fears of others, is to remind ourselves that when voyaging we are probably way safer than we are when ashore, simply because we don’t get in a motor vehicle much when cruising.
Yup, I firmly believe that, when done right, offshore voyaging is way safer than driving—after all, there are a lot fewer damned fools texting and driving drunk on the ocean—and that belief is a huge comfort when planning a voyage.
#2 A Fundamentally Seaworthy Boat
Another of Phyllis’ and my greatest comforts is that we have a fundamentally seaworthy boat. Seems obvious, but in these days of being constantly barraged by safety information it’s easy to forget that if our boat has weaknesses that make her fundamentally unsafe—things like a huge cockpit, poor hull form, or weak construction—no amount of added safety gear is going to make us safe.
And seaworthy boats don’t have to be silly-expensive either, at least relatively. In fact, rather the opposite, since basic seaworthiness seems to have gone out of fashion these days.
For example, we bought Morgan’s Cloud for much less money than many superficially comparable boats because the very features that make her so seaworthy are discounted by a market focused on huge fancy interiors.
#3 A Safe Boat is a Process, Not a Goal
We have owned Morgan’s Cloud for 27 years and even today we are thinking of new ways to make her safer and better. But we never forget that we have been on voyages, some of them pretty challenging, in 22 of those years, starting the first year we owned the boat.
At some point before each voyage, I, as skipper, said “safe enough for this voyage” and left, rather than delaying until everything was perfectly safe—an unattainable goal and a sure recipe for 27 years at the dock.
#4 Skill Over Gear
The more you know, the less you need.
So said Yvon Chouinard, climber, adventurer and founder of Patagonia.
Phyllis and I are constantly reminding ourselves that safety and the success of a voyage are far more dependant on our skills than the safety gear we buy.
#5 Start Slowly
But how did we get those skills? Sure, we read voraciously, and listened to experienced sailors. But all that is almost insignificant compared to our history of building our skills bit by bit, starting with easy cruises and then progressing to more difficult ones—experience, gained over time, in manageable bites, is the biggest contributor to our safety and peace of mind.
#6 Pick The Low-Hanging Fruit
When faced with trying to decide which of “their fears” we need to plan and equip for, we started with the low-hanging fruit.
For example, always rigging a bow preventer when running or reaching was a heck of a lot easier—even before we improved our system (see Further Reading)—than trying to equip our medical kit and train ourselves to deal with a head injury, or coming up with a crew overboard recovery system that will actually work if a jibing boom sends someone flying over the side.
#7 Prioritize
And, in the same vein, knowing that we will never make our boat perfectly safe, or have every piece of gear, or have done every course and drill that the pundits (me included) say we should, Phyllis and I have always prioritized the Big Five:
- Keep the water out.
- Keep the crew on the boat.
- Keep the keel side down.
- Keep the mast up.
- Keep the rudder on.
#8 Prevention is Easier Than Cure
A lot of safety writing around cruising is about curing a problem, but buying all the gear and and doing all the drills and training required to cure every emergency that the vivid imaginations of every pundit can come up with is simply impossible. So Phyllis and I find it’s more practical to focus our efforts on prevention.
For example, it’s way easier to install a good crew overboard prevention system, than try to come up with a realistic way to recover someone in the water. So we spend way more time and effort making as sure as we can that we move around the deck safely than say practicing the Quick Stop manoeuvre or buying, installing and practicing with a parbuckle recovery system.
#9 What We Choose To Do, We Do Right
When constantly barraged by “the sum of their fears”, it’s very easy to slip into the trap of trying to mitigate all of those dangers. This approach will push us into spending a bunch of money on every conceivable piece of safety gear but not install it, or learn to use it properly, for lack of time. The consequence being we won’t actually be making our boats safer, or at least not much.
So Phyllis and I try hard to do the things we choose to focus on really right. For example, not just buy a series drogue and throw it in a locker, but rather:
- Buy a series drogue.
- Install massive chain plates to take the load.
- Figure out, practice, and document deployment and retrieval.
- Continuously update in light of new knowledge: Before going on our next long voyage, we will upsize the bolts on the chain plates, change the thimbles on the bridles, and replace the first section of the drogue with new cones.
(See Further Reading for details).
#10 Your Fears Are Not My Fears
As Churchill pointed out, each of us have our own personal demons. Mine are a major gear failure in a remote place and storms at sea. Phyllis worries most about me falling overboard and storms at sea. So that’s where we first put our safety efforts. Others will have different pet fears. But here’s the key point:
If we are to leave the dock on a voyage, we can’t take on everyone’s fears, even though many of them are perfectly valid. Like Churchill, we must weigh the odds and at some point take action (leave the wharf). And by prioritizing our own fears, at least we will feel better prepared, and therefore less anxious, and so have more fun.
For example, you may decide that that you value moving around on deck unencumbered over the risk of falling overboard, and so focus on recovery. (I’m not advocating for this, but it’s a perfectly valid choice.)
Or you might have had a terrible experience with fire in your life that may make you focus on learning everything possible about full-on firefighting, including doing a course with real practice in smoke-filled confined spaces. Whereas Phyllis and I make sure we have the basic firefighting kit and that our smoke detectors work, and leave it at that.
#11 Beware The Forums
If ever there was a cauldron that boils up “the sum of their fears” and then serves the result up in an ugly soup of terror, it’s the modern sailing forum, in which posters keep adding their own fears to a subject until the thread is scores (or even hundreds) of comments long.
Much of it is simply oft-repeated memes without much rational thought about validity. And a distressing amount of it is simply other cruisers trying to puff up their egos, or dampen their own fears, by telling the rest of us how smart and well prepared they are.
(By the way, although I don’t hang out on forums, I’m sure I have been guilty of the latter two sins here in the comments. I will try to do better in future.)
So sure, we can learn stuff from forums, but we gotta filter it…big time.
Summary
Before I close, I need to make clear that my purpose in writing this article is not to convince you that my fears are the most important, or that my decisions about prioritizing what safety equipment to buy and install are right, or that my decisions about what safety drills to do and which not to bother with are correct.
Rather, my purpose is to inspire you to filter “the sum of their fears” rationally, make your own safety decisions, do the stuff you do right…and get out there cruising.
Further Reading
- Crew overboard prevention done right.
- Storm survival done right.
- Preventers done easy and right.
- How we think about fire at sea.
- Thinking about crew overboard risk rationally.
Comments
So how do you wend your way through “the sum of their fears” to actually get out there cruising? Please leave a comment.