I have been writing about gear for offshore cruising boats for coming up 30 years. The good, the bad, and the downright dangerous.
And for 15 years I have been discussing those articles in the comments here at AAC—44,000 comments at the time of writing, and probably another 10,000 that got lost when we deleted out-of-date articles.
Here are some of the things I have learned about the way we humans, including me, make mistakes when evaluating gear and boats, and how we can learn to do better—no, I don’t have this cracked, but at least I have a good handle on the reasons for the mistakes I have made, and continue to make.
John, it is rare for someone in sport to discuss epistemology and bias, together which comprise the hidden framework for the communication and decision-making that we humans make hundreds of times per day. Even in my profession, medicine, bias has only been recognized as a dangerous player in diagnosis and treatment for perhaps 20 years. However, on a moment-to-moment level few of us have the “band width” to meta-analyze our decisions while we are making them. Given that imitation bias is so strong, it is essential that gurus like you publicly analyze your mistakes to prevent us from making them a second time. There are many aphorisms, I bet, that relate to this: the first one that comes to mind begins with “pride.”
Hi Bruce,
Good point on “band width”. I struggle with how to allocate my time and energy all the time and getting that wrong has also contributed to a lot of my mistakes. Anyway, not sure I would classify myself as a guru since that would seem to imply always being right, which is clearly not the case!
A guru is a spiritual teacher. I come here not for someone who has “gotten it all right”, but to learn your phillosophy of modern, enlightened sea voyaging. Glad to pay my case of good beer to be the company of the wise group that is AAC.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the kind words. To be thought of as a “spiritual teacher” is humbling indeed. Good point about a “wise group” as I would not dare do this without the checks and balances of the comments.
Hi John,
I do not know of any recreational activity where judgment and risk assessment are such an everyday, ongoing and consuming activity.
You mention some excellent “tells” that confirmation bias is playing a part in assessment. I will suggest that it is possible to become more skillful at catching yourself going down the road of bias and to train yourself to think more clearly. The book that has helped me a great deal in this regard are Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”. A more accessible version of this is in Michael Lewis’s “The Undoing Project” (about the collaboration that led to “Thinking…”).
That said, after reading Lewis go to the original.
My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy
Hi Dick,
I agree that if you can get through “Thinking Fast and Slow” it’s useful. That said, in my view it’s one of those many books that could have used a really tough edit to cut it down by about 50% without losing any of the utility.
Thanks John,
thought it was just me.
Great concept, painful reading the book.
I enjoyed your article a lot, thought provoking is the fact it cruising is relatively safe leading to compliance, assumptions and bias.
I try to question everything, especially if it’s new to the senses. A new sound, look, feel, touch, or smell- I force myself assume the worst and attend to it, or at least put it on the list of tasks.
Eternal vigilance, it seems almost everything gives a warning before it fails.
Hi Johannes,
Thanks for the kind words on the piece. I enjoyed writing it too.
And yes, that sort of vigilance is equally important. We cover that and much else in this article: https://www.morganscloud.com/2024/04/15/40-rules-for-a-reliable-sailboat/
Hi John,
An important article. You wrote:
starting with the assumption that buying the boat (or gear) is a bad idea.
Good suggestion.
My on-watch head-set when doing 360s is to assume there is a ship out there and I need to find it till I convince myself I was wrong.
Similarly with rig inspections and the like: Know there is a problem and you need to find it. Do not stop until convinced all is OK.
Makes a big difference in attentiveness.
My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy
Hi Dick,
40 years ago I lived 16 km (10 miles) west of Oslo and biked to the centre every work day. I did it as a workout, on a good bike, trying to beat my own record, so the speed was high. The route was mostly on small roads or separate bike roads, but far from only that. I was aware that due to many repetitions, the probability of a bad crash with a car, was quite high. Just one small mistake by me or anyone else at the critical moment…
To reduce this risk, I decided the only thing I could do was to work with my own attitude and awareness. So I started to look really well and plan every operation consciously, to make sure I was on top of every situation before it happened. That worked great, for almost one day…
If the only motivation for sticking with a decision is possible future danger, there’s no way I’m able to keep the attention level anywhere near what it needs to be. Logic and willpower are mostly flimsy illusions. My laziness, distraction or hybris will always win, quickly.
To change that, I made those bike trips partly into a game:
– The moment i stepped onto my bike, a man stepped into a car.
– He had one goal for the day, to run me down.
– He knew exactly where I was, but I had no idea where he was.
If I really believed this, I’d need a psychiatrist, but as a mind game it did exactly what I wanted. It made looking for danger into an interesting creative challenge and a story.
I stayed totally on top of everything possible along the route. I’d look at every detail along the route, to find possible traps and possible ways out if it. Things like: “If he comes out from behind those bushes by that house, I’ll jump up on the sidewalk on the same side and onto the grass behind him.” It seems strange to do this for 2 times 25 minutes every day. But it really became a natural thing. It became a habit that was easy, so I could stick to the game of planning escapes constantly, while also thinking about other things.
Did I ever get hit by the imaginary driver? Nope, 🙂 but the attitude saved me from serious injury, possibly death, twice. Weirdly, they were both actually intentionally aiming for me. A car first, who I didn’t get hold of, and a year later a bus. The driver got a big fine and lost his licence permanently. His own passengers were witnesses. Insane. I never met any of them before, so I have no idea why.
I don’t know in detail how one could “gamify” the various activities on a boat in a similar way, but what you mention Dick, is certainly one way. If we pretend that we KNOW something is wrong, we’ll look better. That’s just how our mind works. Rather than being victims of confirmation bias, we use it to our benefit. I think we could find several other useful angles to this way of thinking.
Hi Stein,
Interesting strategy and I am so glad it worked: I just returned from the UK where I had to be consciously on-guard and not be on auto-pilot, as, if on auto-pilot, I would be looking the “wrong” way for traffic: cars, of course, worry me, but bike riders are harder to spot and often coming fast. And, the game you made of it: I call it the “What if…. Game?” and play it all the time.
A while ago, I wrote a bit about the need for skippers to have the kind of awareness that you were describing so well when you needed a strategy to keep yourself safe on your bike trips. I described it as skippers benefitting from what I called, I hope a bit humorously, but also, I think, accurate, “a low-grade paranoia”. This is evidenced by skippers looking for what might go wrong, where danger lies, planning ahead for problems that might never occur, having escape routes from anchorages to open water in mind, etc. etc.
There are those who seem to have charmed lives and are not so attentive and get away with it: but I am not one of them. I cruise with a loved one and generally wander widely and am with you in wanting to have a plan for what might emerge from behind those bushes.
My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy
Chronic Unease is the term that used to be quite popular in industry to describe a way of thinking about what could go wrong. The objective of course was to identify weaknesses and address them before the potential issue was realised.
Today, industry has moved to Psychological Safety, or Human Factors. The objective is the same.
Changing mindsets is an incredibly difficult thing to do, especially in a group of people.
We are the sum of our experiences, and hold a vision of reality in our psyche. This vision of reality is maintained through a bias confirming auto helm that will always try to keep us within that vision of realty. There are various ways that we can reprogram our auto helm to change our vision of realty through the power of routine affirmation of a desired way of being. The auto helm is what makes people institutionalised e.g. long term unemployed, living with PTSD.
Stein’s experiences with risk prevention when cycling will have contributed to his vision of reality and attitude towards safety.
My point is that there are very powerful psychological stimulators that lock us into behaving and reacting in a consistent manner.
This article is very interesting and covers a lot of prompts that can confirm biases. Great article.
Hi Alastair,
Thanks for the kind words. It’s an article that’s been perking in my head for years.
Hi Dick and Alastair,
I think Dick’s term “low-grade paranoia” is a good description of the notion I tried to create. Not only “what if”, but; “I know for sure that today he will try. I just need to figure out where and how, early enough.” I really needed to exaggerate the idea to control the natural tendency to relax.
I love the alleged insurance claim from a suburb with lots of similar houses with similar gardens: “Turning up the wrong driveway, I hit a tree I don’t have.” That’s the same hard to beat mindset at work.
I think Alastairs “auto helm” is a good name. As mentioned, deciding to look out very carefully just didn’t do the job for me. I was just not able to stay focussed enough to suit the actual problem. My autopilot told me that I was a good biker with good situational awareness (true), so I could relax and just push on (NOT true).
An unaware misconception I wasn’t able to disregard, even after realising it logically must be wrong. I just could not turn off my auto helm, even when I was aware that it was steering me into trouble. I need mind tricks to get past that type of problems. Perhaps we all do. I don’t know.
This is so accurate. A well made point John
Think about where the real bias lies between those trying to sell you something (maybe a million-dollar something) and those charging you a flat-rate membership for less than the cost of a case of beer6, who gain nothing based on what you buy7.
Hi, and Merry Christmas. I love head thinking articles.
I recently bought a Mast Mate, to get to the spreaders only, by myself, to check things and do a little work. (Also bought back up goodies, etc for safety.) With the Mast Mate I also bought one of their work belts. Both nicely made products. I liked the idea of the work belt acting similarly to a lineman belt, to lean into a bit. I got it all set up, harnessed in, etc, and put on the belt. I’m a big guy (and no, not just in the round direction, I think) and I could not put the belt through the rings with enough tail left over for safe use. Then I put the strap around the mast. It held me way to close. So close I couldn’t climb. I couldn’t reach anywhere. I almost just chucked it up to another big guy problem, and bite the cost. One reason was the embarrassment thing. Didnt want to hear it was a one size fits all and its my problem. Usual stuff. But I e-mailed them. I got a reply from Matt, one of the owners. He said they had never heard of this problem before. And it’s probably true. Doesn’t seem to be a lot of big sailors out there aside from rail meat. And maybe others didnt want to bother, or deal with vendor slaps upside the head over not much money. Matt said they would make it right be designing a bigger belt. I send back the old one and get the new one. Good folk.
I didn’t go online to find others to verify my problem, or whine about it, I never do. I can usually see the problem without help, after I’ve broken it. And I sure as heck wouldn’t post the reason openly and get wacked by the know it alls. But maybe I should have, to be helpful.
So I found a helpful vendor willing to listen, and change, without bias. And I took the time, stepped back a bit, and it worked out well.
Peace this season
Ralph.
Hi Ralph,
Great story and very heartening.
Great article John. As a former survival instructor I spent a lot of time understanding and teaching myself and others about confirmation bias. Like you, I have many stories of my own mistakes where confirmation bias over ruled compelling evidence. Like the time I was supposed to be following a dry river bed downstream in the desert and managed to take a wrong turn and despite walking uphill for hours, still managed to bend my reading of the map to what I thought was true. Took us further from water and potentially into danger.
I have found a useful tactic is to intentionally flip the information in some way to force a different perspective. Some examples:
🔹 In the days of paper maps, turning the map upside down and seeing if my ‘logic’ still made sense worked well.
🔹 Deliberately spending 1 – 10 min asking and answering the question what evidence is there that I am completely wrong?
🔹 Debriefing with – what went well? – What could be improved? or What should we start doing, stop doing or keep doing?
🔹 ALWAYS (If only that were true) listening when someone else starts expressing a contrary view. They don’t always know what they are talking about, but if they see it differently to me, a little curiosity heads many bias problems off early.
🔹 Taking a short time out to think. A special forces friend said that you can always find at least a minute to think, and a minute if you actually stop and think is actually quite a long time. He also said if you genuinely don’t have a minute, you should be diving for cover!
🔹 Another special forces operative talked about a designated ‘red team’. Once you make a plan, hand it over to the red team who should be knowledgable but have no attachment to the plan (ideally they are not involved in making the plan or executing it). Their job is to act like the ‘enemy’ and tell you how they would tactically out do you in the field based on all the dumb shit in your plan. It works because you are specifically asking for the feedback, not someone to tell you how great you are. It hopefully takes care of some of the ‘punch in the face’ and ‘first contact with the enemy’ that plans fail to survive.
🔹 Avoid any form of ‘get-there-itis’ as much as possible. That applies to rushed gear/packing decisions as much as destination pressure. I fly aircraft as well, and an old commercial pilot friend used to say ‘Think very very carefully about every take off. No one’s ever stayed up there. Once you leave the ground you are committed to coming back down whether you like it or not.’
As always John, I love your measured and intelligent assessments. Keep up the great work.
PS- I am not yet an owner, and have only done a little offshore cruising or racing. Take the above as advice from an arid area desert survival guy and tailor to the ocean as relevant.
Hi Mike,
All great tips! I particularly like numbers 2 and 4. So hard to do, but so valuable.
Hey Guys!! Happy, Happy Holidays! I singlehanded our boat for 4-5 years (1990-1994), across the Pacific, until I met my beautiful wife. I was young. I had the jack lines you write of because (as you also write) it seemed like the thing to do. I confess I never really used them or perceived the need to. I have never had the occasional to fall off the boat. Not even close. In 40+ years of sailing. On deliveries I have done over the years I ALWAYS tell crew “Don’t fall off the boat” ….. in my opinion: “chances are not good we’ll manage to retrieve you”…
Anyway, I did not know that jack lines were a problem. Please tell me what the issue is???
BTW…. the LFP solution for our batteries : install 2016, 476 pack cycles, performing as if still new!!! Definitely one of the best gear decisions we have made. As you have written: they are not a ‘drop in’ alternative to lead acid tech.
Hi Devon,
Good thoughts. More on why side deck jacklines are a bad idea and what to do about it, as well as much more on the COB subject: https://www.morganscloud.com/category/safety/book-crew-overboard/
Hi John,
A bit of a side topic, but still related:
About the update of the old Man OverBoard, MOB to a gender neutral format. I support that, of course.
I notice that you here use COB, crew overboard. Earlier I’ve seen POB, person overboard. Here I also noticed Matt using MOB for Mariner OverBord.
It’s neither easy nor quick to change terminology like this, so the easier the change can be made, the quicker it will get adopted. I like Matt’s version the best, since it’s the same MOB that we’re used to, just with one different word in the explanation.
Mariner OverBoard seems like the right choice. Is there anything I’ve overlooked? Could easily be, since I didn’t grow up with English.
Hi Stein,
After a lot of thought and discussion Phyllis and I changed to Crew Overboard (COB) a year or so ago, and changed all posts (a hell of a job) to reflect that. The problem with MOB is that in pretty much everyone’s mind that’s Man Overboard, regardless of what we write at the beginning of an article, and POB can also be Persons on Board.
Some will say that the above noted assumption about MOB does not matter, but I will near guarantee you that those that say that are men. It’s easy to be sanguine about non-inclusive language when you are not one of the excluded.
We will not be changing again, unless someone points out something valid and important that I have missed in the above.
Hi John,
All you say is logic and I agree with it.
However, there’s another relevant issue in this: How soon the new term becomes used by the majority. The main factors are:
1. How easy is it for users to adopt the change?
2. How often are they exposed to the need to change?
I hope, in addition to AAC, many more authoritative entities start to make the change, but to make it affect general language, all of them have to establish the same term.
I see pretty much every entity around, so far, sticking with MOB, and close to never making a point about the problem with it. Those three letters have gotten a strong hold of an important concept. Even not very competent people, those who don’t have any contact with proper knowledge sources like AAC, know what MOB means.
AAC definitely has a significant influence on an, in this context, influential group of people. Establishing a completely new term can succeed by just spreading out from here. Still, it will certainly be very much slower than sticking with the established term and just changing the explanation for it, so the change can soak in without having to learn or practice.
That’s why I think Mariner OverBoard might be a better choice. It would seamlessly just be adopted. “Mariner” is also more informative and cooler sounding than “Man”. Perhaps also more than “Crew”? Cooler sounding = motivation for adoption.
I don’t know if there are initiatives or agreements among maritime media etc on this, but I think that might be useful, no matter which term is chosen.
Hi Stein,
Sure MOB be is still common usage, but then AAC has never followed the crowd and someone must start or no good change ever gets done. We don’t use affiliate links either, even though everyone else does.
And nothing changes that when MOB is read, all of us think Man Overboard so only a substantive change will be beneficial.
And no, there is absolutely zero cooperation between marine publications to the point that the others won’t even link to us, even though we link to them when we think a piece of their content is good.
Hi John,
I had not thought about it this way but I have certainly observed and fallen prey to several of these.
For bigger or trickier purchases, I have developed a system that works for us (I typically write it down and review with my wife) and I think helps us work through a couple of the issues you mention although definitely not all. This is based on what I have to do for work a lot so I have gotten a lot of practice and made plenty of mistakes. I start by figuring out the use case. If I am buying a boat, I would write down how often we expect to daysail it, cruise it, where it will be used, typical mileage per day we want, conditions it might be sailed in, who will be aboard, etc. From there, I write down actual requirements. Taking typical mileage per day, I would break that into requirements for motoring performance (such as 6 knots into 15 knot wind with 2-3′ chop) and sailing performance (such as PHRF rating below 130).
We then create a spreadsheet which has the requirements vs all the potential solutions. I find it very helpful to color code how everything is doing against the requirements such as green for meeting, yellow for close and red for failing. The color coding tells us where to focus and provides insights like a solution can be great except 1 thing it fails whereas another solution is only marginal at most things but doesn’t really fail anything. Some people go as far as to weight the requirements and give a roll-up score (this is known as a Pugh matrix) but I actually don’t find that helpful usually, just color coding with no weighting communicates to me what is important.
We have used this for buying a house, boats, cars as well as some smaller gear such as deciding on headsail size and have sometimes surprised ourselves by what we are steered towards although we end up happier in the end. For even smaller purchases, I still make a point of thinking this way although it doesn’t get done as formally and is not written down. To me the most important part is figuring out the requirements before evaluating something so that the requirements are not too swayed by a potential solution we saw. If you can’t come up with good requirements, you probably don’t understand how you will use it or you don’t need it at all. This method isn’t perfect and takes some practice to do well but it suits us well.
Eric
Hi Eric,
That’s a great way to come at it, and is very like what we did to arrive at the J/109. Just the process helps to take the emotion out of the decision, I find.
All good thoughts but to me the most important part of your comment to take aboard is: “If you can’t come up with good requirements, you probably don’t understand how you will use it or you don’t need it at all”.
I think that really taking that to heart can save us a huge amount of aggravation and expense, particularly around things like the hugely complex and expensive electrical and electronic systems that seem to be proliferating.
Risk = Probability X Consequence. And: Everything will fail, eventually: The question is when and how.
From the discipline of physical asset management. So the goal is to reduce either probability or consequence, or both if possible.
Great article, excellent discussion in comments.
Happy 2025 to you and your team, John!
We communicated about Robert’s Leak Plug in the past. I wanted to take this innovation up again.
I served in the Navy, where we had monthly fire, nuclear, and leak drills. However, recreational boating courses do not educate sailors on what to do during a hull breach. Last year, a Swedish-flagged Arcona 460 sank in the Pacific because the broken rudder-stock had compromised the hull at its entry point. The rupture was less than 6″ in diameter, and the sailors had to abandon their ship after two hours because they found no means to plug the hole.
I developed Robert’s Leak Plug for similar emergencies. The regular-size plug has a 6′-diameter patch, and the large-size plug has a ten-inch diameter patch. Several plugs can be arranged next to each other for more significant breaches. Both sizes are handy and easily used in confined places. The handle is engineered as an anvil to apply force when pushing the plug through the hole. It can also be detached and used as a wooden through-hull plug. Robert’s Leak Plug may not be a one-size-fits-all solution for all emergencies, but neither is a band-aid remedy for every injury. Please find more information at http://www.leak-plug.com
https://youtu.be/y9sf_So8J4Y?si=Du7Avvtb1RnbcxSH
Hi Robert,
This article has really nothing to do with your product, so please don’t use us as an advertising medium. That said, It’s fine to mention your product on a relevant article, but if memory serves I think you have already done that? If not feel free: https://www.morganscloud.com/category/safety/keeping-the-water-out/
Hi John,
I’m sorry about that. I was sure it fell under the category of offshore cruising gear. I will go back to my old post/comment and update it.
Thanks!
Keep up the good work, John!