Sleeping underway risk

[tdw]

I confess I've never tried sleeping on board a sailing boat in anything more than 35 knots , 4 - 5 metre swell and with only occasional white caps. Max speed around 7 - 8 knots. That was bumpy but not out of control. We were close hauled so lee berth was pretty secure.

I could well understand the worry about injury in wilder seas or on board a faster racing machine where they are coming off the top at speed but in a slow boat surely less of a problem provided decent lee cloths and the like.

[SeaQuinn]

Maybe we should simply invent a new safety device ....like a bubble wrap suit for sleeping underway. You just zip yourself in, sort of like in a cocoon. Why it could double as an individualized life raft.....

[PalmettoSailor]

Originally Posted by SeaQuinn

Maybe we should simply invent a new safety device ....like a bubble wrap suit for sleeping underway. You just zip yourself in, sort of like in a cocoon. Why it could double as an individualized life raft.....

Yeah, no-one has ever been hurt when a sailboat grounded.

Donnybrook grounding | The Daily Sail

Both on my boat and the boats I've crewed on feet forward when in a berth was mandatory.

[CapnBilll]

Originally Posted by SeaQuinn

Maybe we should simply invent a new safety device ....like a bubble wrap suit for sleeping underway. You just zip yourself in, sort of like in a cocoon. Why it could double as an individualized life raft.....

That is kinda a good idea. I often wondered about a bubble wrap lifejacket.


Another is a full body suit like the cheap plastic hipwaders I have, but up to the neck, (the problem with the cheap hipwaders though, is once I was duck hunting, and accidently went through a blackberry bush, now it has one thousand holes, and leaks like a seive.

[davidpm]

Originally Posted by PalmettoSailor

Yeah, no-one has ever been hurt when a sailboat grounded.

Donnybrook grounding | The Daily Sail

Both on my boat and the boats I've crewed on feet forward when in a berth was mandatory.

That's interesting. What a hit.
The reason I thought of it was that recently I was on a boat where we hit a rock and even though we were going only about 5 knots the shock was significant and one person buggered their knee.

While I agree the risk is very low the consequences are so horrendous and the solution is so simple (sleeping feet forward) it seemed like something some skippers may want to put into their risk assessment equation.

Another way of looking at it is if a skipper has a habit of doing the safer thing for 10 behaviors that each have only a .1 percent chance of disaster he has increased his safety factor a whole 1 percent. The one percent don't sound like much but if you sail 50 days a year then maybe you have saved yourself a disaster every two years.

And yes for you statisticians I know the above math is sloppy at best but I suspect you get the point.

Some people are luckier than others and others are more accident prone. Maybe it is not luck but math.

[Hartley18]

Originally Posted by PalmettoSailor

Yeah, no-one has ever been hurt when a sailboat grounded.

Donnybrook grounding | The Daily Sail

Both on my boat and the boats I've crewed on feet forward when in a berth was mandatory.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't get your point. Everyone knows it's highly likely someone will get hurt if the boat grounds, but unless I missed it, the article you posted doesn't say what happened (if anything) to anyone sleeping below... which is the subject of this thread.

Given that most people put their head on a pillow when sleeping and that said pillow usually fills any gap between their head and any nearby bulkhead, I'd say your risk of injury during a hard stop is far, far lower if you are lying down head-forward than if you happen to be standing/sitting anywhere else on the boat.

AFAIK, the only reason to sleep feet first is so you can get out of the bunk quickly in an emergency - nothing else - and to sleep feet forward in a quarter berth is just silly.

[tdw]

I tend to agree with Hartley here. While the chances of injury if standing, are high no doubt, I still think that in a cruising boat or even an average racer lying down you are going to be relatively safe and much more likely to suffer an injury from simply falling onto e.g. a winch handle.

There comes a point when you have to weigh up the risk v the probability. Sure its a gamble but one simply cannot cover every eventuality.

[fryewe]

Interesting topic and a near duplicate from May 2011.

At sea for parts of five decades in the USN on many different classes of ships and berthing was always feet aft for fore and aft bunks.

I don't know why other than to make it consistent so stinky feet weren't near noses.

[ParadiseParrot]

You can die walking your doggie!

[hellosailor]

Quite logical, david. Unfortunately, there might be a feng shui conflict there.

Perhaps I could interest you in a set of velcro sheets and jammies? Once in bed, you will stay firmly in place until the morning. (G)