10-point overboard plan

EVERY NOW AND THEN someone falls overboard.  What happens after that — whether they’ll live or die — depends on a lot of different circumstances, including the time of day or night, the state of the sea, whether or not their disappearance was noticed, the temperature of the water, the number of crew available for rescue, what the victim was wearing in the way of safety gear, and so on.

Every episode of a person overboard is so different from every other episode that

impossible to drew up a fixed set of actions to deal with the situation.  Clearly, the crew remaining on board will have to make a lot of spur-of-the-moment decisions, and just as clearly, there will be a lot of luck involved in a successful rescue.

Nevertheless, there is a basic crew-overboard procedure that can be applied and adapted as necessary, and one of its chief functions might well be to avoid the panic and inefficiency that quickly assumes lethal proportions when there is no coherent emergency plan with which everyone on board is familiar.

So here’s a 10-point plan that could form the basis of a crew-overboard procedure. It should be learned by every member of the crew.  I realize that that is a tall order, because not many sailors will bother.  Nevertheless, the skipper should insist that everyone under his command at least becomes familiar with it.  There’s little point in printing it out and handing copies to people when an emergency occurs because usually there won’t be time or opportunity to study it, but at least crewmembers who have read it in advance will recognize the steps being taken and perhaps use their own initiative when the skipper is too busy to give individual orders to everyone. It is, after, a list of common-sense moves. This is how it goes:

1.  Shout “Crew overboard!” to alert the crew.

2.  Throw overboard horseshoe lifebuoys and anything else in the cockpit likely to provide flotation or mark the spot. Heave a Lifesling buoy overboard.

3.  Detail someone to point at the person in the water and keep pointing, no matter what.

4.  Press the button on your GPS that saves your present position and allows you to track back to it.

5.  Note your compass course, then turn the boat on a reciprocal course as quickly as possible. It is very important not to stray too far from the victim.

6.  Approach the victim cautiously from leeward and be prepared to cut power to avoid propeller injuries.

7.  In one end of a suitable line, tie a bowline to slip over the victim’s head and shoulders. This will probably not be needed if you use a Lifesling and the victim is correctly attached.

8.  Haul the victim up out of the water any way you can — into a dinghy, onto the deck, or into the cockpit, with a halyard, block and tackle, or sheer muscle power. On a calm day, you might be able to lower the mainsail into the water and roll the victim aboard in the bunt.

9.  Treat the victim as necessary for water inhalation, shock, hypothermia, or heart failure.

10. Radio for medical advice or broadcast a Mayday call if warranted.

Today’s Thought

Who can hope to be safe? who sufficiently cautious?

Guard himself as he may, every moment’s an ambush.

— Horace, Odes

Tailpiece

“Would you prefer red wine or white, sir?”

“Shucks, it makes no difference to me young feller, I’m color blind.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

GPS's unfortunate downside

 AS A NAVIGATOR in the dark days before GPS, I used to do a lot of guessing. Most of it was informed guessing, however. I had my reasons.

For example, I discovered that a right-handed helmsman sailed a course farther off the wind while on the beat on the port tack than did a left-handed helmsman. The opposite applied when the boat was on the other tack. The left-handed helm was using his right hand on the tiller, his weaker arm, and so the boat rounded up more in the gusts and carved a course closer to the wind. The right-handed helm was able to use his greater strength to apply more weather helm to stay on course.   

The reason I knew this was because, in between sextant sights, it was the navigator’s task to keep a dead reckoning plot. But he couldn’t stay awake in the cockpit day and night to check that the helmsman was following exactly the course he had been given, so he asked the cockpit crew at the end of every four-hour watch to estimate what their average speed had been and what average course they had sailed. This information was then plotted on the chart to give a dead-reckoning position.

In the ancient days of commercial sail they used a traverse board for the same purpose. It was a very clever little device that allowed the navigator to see at a glance the speed and course the ship had covered during the last watch. It was nothing more than a wooden board with a compass rose on its face and 32 radial rows of holes. Every half-hour, when the sand-glass was turned, the helmsman placed a peg in the hole of the compass point that matched the average direction the ship had been steered during the last 30 minutes.

At the same time, the crew ascertained the ship’s speed on a chip log, and a peg was placed in the appropriate hole on a special speed grid. So the navigator could now come on deck and see what had been happening in the way of speed and direction while he was down below, allowing for all the zigs and zags and wavy wake lines.

He would make a note of these averages and start guessing about leeway and current and a few other things that his instinct supplied corrections for, and then he could plot a dead-reckoning position on a chart. Then all the pegs were pulled out of the board for the next watch to play with.

Nowadays, with all those clever satellites twinkling away in the sky, there’s no need for a traverse board or dead reckoning. GPS does all the grunt work and makes navigation so easy that nobody has any respect for the job any more. Ordinary foredeck hands used to step back in awe when the navigator came strolling along jauntily with his sextant box under his arm and a roll of charts in his hand. Skippers used to address navigators with civility, offer them drinks, and treat them almost as if they were human. No longer, I’m afraid. All that has gone. GPS is very clever, but it has a lot to answer for.

Today’s Thought

Navigation is what tells you where you are, and, what’s just as important, where you aren’t.

 — John Vigor

Tailpiece

“Why do all those cows in Switzerland wear bells around their necks?”

“Dunno. Maybe it’s because their horns don’t work.”