I still can't believe some of you guys say, in an emergency a checklist is useless. When I used to run simulators for the shuttle (ok it was as a counselor for space academy, but we took it very seriously and we ran the exact same equipment, documentation, etc. as the real guys), if $hit hit the fan you'd be doing whatever gut reaction it was to correct with one hand and one eye, and scanning the SOP book with the other hand and eye, and telling ground control (or in the case of sailboats the admiral) to figure out what the hell just happened (but always in a calm collected manner).
So, saying SOP's are useless in an emergency is BS. Yes you need to be taking corrective action, but only until you can find the SOP for that situation, then you let the calm rational person who wrote that SOP take over.
An example, your sailing at night and your crewmate is taking a leak off the stern and slips and falls in. First, you throw the MoB stick etc., then you hit the MoB on the
GPS, then get her turned around to try to find him. If you lost sight of him (likely) you grab the SOP book and
radio, call a mayday, and find your list, start at the top and with one eye, run through it, while continuing the search with the other. If you didn't have a list, what if you forgot to grab the
radio and call a mayday, or you thought, oh, I'll find him, it's not an emergency I don't need to call in a mayday yet. Your brain really doesn't function that well when your body is throwing chemicals into it and you're hyperventilating, so don't trust it. Sailors are pretty much on their own as far as safety goes, and so are shuttle pilots. So if NASA says when you are falling to earth in a brick with wings that are essentially for show and you only have about 45 seconds before you form an expensive crater that you really need to look at a checklist, I think you've got time on sailboat going 5 knots.
Caveat Umptor: When we ran fire drills or single SRB failure drills, we got to the checklists about the time we had completed the second to last item on the list.