Any activity has a few skills so essential to safety and effectiveness that they should be mastered to the point where they are reflex actions. In recent columns I have reviewed four skills that, I think, are fundamental to good seamanship and happiness afloat. Here they are in the form of resolutions:
1. I shall not run square before the wind.
2. I shall watch the telltales.
3. I shall exploit my traveler.
4. I shall learn how to reef in two minutes.
Now number 5: I shall remember that I can fall overboard at any time.
Forehanded sailors always have good rescue gear and have practiced using it (by the way, have you ever tried out your Lifesling?). Even more important, sailors who know there’s trouble out there work hard at avoiding falling overboard by wearing safety harnesses. Here are some tips on where to hook the harness, followed by summaries of two eye-opening studies of crewoverboard (COB) accidents that may well persuade even the most casual skipper to have the crew wear safety harnesses at night and whenever the boat is even a little bouncy.
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A safety harness is an arrangement of webbing worn on the upper body and connected to the boat with a tether. Because the shock load of a falling body can be more than 2,000 pounds, the tether and harness must be made of sturdy webbing and stainless steel rings and snap hooks. A lot more can be said about harness design. Here my focus is on how to use them. The harness in these photographs is my Sospenders combination safety harness/automatic inflatable PFD with a single long tether – a system that has long served me well. It’s worn by Bill Gladstone, head of North U. (the education arm of North Sails, for which Bill and I have developed a national Cruising and Seamanship Seminar program). Despite our best efforts to suggest that Mike Madigan’s excellent Sabre 402
Southern Cross was blasting through 20-foot breaking seas, she was in fact docked at Norwalk, CT, where we were stripping off her sails, Bimini, and dodger in preparation for hurricane Isabel.
An excellent argument for using a safety harness is that it provides a “third hand” when you’re walking forward in rough weather, steering, trimming sheets, working at the mast, coming up through the companionway, or doing any other two-handed job on a boat. That’s when the famous “one hand for yourself” is otherwise engaged with ship’s business. A key element is the jackline—a long length of sturdy webbing or line running on each side deck from bow to stern. Lifelines are not reliable for this purpose (the name to the contrary). The jackline in these photos is the type I prefer, heavy webbing with a color and feel that distinguish it from rope (few things are more embarrassing or awkward than hooking onto a jib sheet). When hooked onto the jackline or a fitting, the tether should lead “uphill” and to windward. That way, a fall will land you on deck and not in the drink. Keep the tether as short to minimize the shock load; I often pass it through or around the jack line or a fitting and clip it onto the harness
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How important is all this? Consider some data about the dangers of falling overboard that come to us from Seattle and Chicago.
A study of 105 COB accidents by the Seattle Sailing Foundation presents us with two important lessons. First, be especially careful around cold water. Of the people who went over in cold water, 54 percent died, while only 31 percent died in warm water. (No matter how warm the water is, it’s still colder than your body and will eventually cause hypothermia.)
Second, the Lifesling rescue device (which the Seattle Sailing Foundation invented) works both directly and indirectly. Even when it did not make the rescue, many swimmers were recovered alive. I think several factors are at play here. One is that elements of the Lifesling rescue strategy (especially the quick stop technique of heading into the wind immediately) are just as valuable as the entire strategy. Another is that Lifesling training makes people better sailors and better rescuers. A third factor, I think, is that better sailors are forehanded sailors and, therefore, have and practice with Lifeslings.
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Supplementing the Seattle data is a study by Glenn McCarthy, of Chicago, of 80 crew overboard accidents that occurred during races on Lake Michigan between 1960 and 1998. Once every four years, a Lake Michigan racing sailor dies in a crew overboard accident, Glenn says. More than a third of these 80 cases involved injuries, the two most common of which were hypothermia and death. People fell overboard for several reasons
—the boat sank, for instance, or the sailor was washed through the lifelines, or a lifeline broke, or the boom (not held out by a preventer) knocked the sailor overboard.
Life jackets save lives. In 40 percent of these accidents, the sailor overboard was wearing personal flotation. Eight sailors died in the water, and seven of them were not wearing flotation.
When can you fall over? Anytime. Sailors were more than eight times more likely to fall overboard at night than during the day. Still, McCarthy discovered a high incidence of COB accidents before or after races, when sailors tend to be less vigilant (just like cruisers who are a little careless in their home waters). While most falls overboard occurred in strong winds, 40 percent of the accidents were in winds under 18 knots, and the majority occurred in waves three feet or smaller.
Who can go over? Anybody. While many victims were bowmen, for every two crew who went over from the foredeck, one helmsman went over from the cockpit. Even sailors below deck or in the companionway can go overboard (say, hauled by an unruly spinnaker they are trying to pull below).
The most surprising and sobering of McCarthy’s findings is that in one-third of these accidents, two or more sailors went over the side, thereby compounding the already difficult problem of saving one person into the very demanding one of rescuing two. Nobody ever wants to be in the position, whether in the boat or, God forbid, in the water.
(Glenn McCarthy’s report may be read in full on the U.S. Sailing Association’s Safety-at-Sea site at www.ussailing.org/safety/Studies/1998_lmsrf_study.htm and www.ussailing.org/safety/Studies/1998_lmsrf_stats.htm.)
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