I thought the French were the safety conscious ones?!

[dom]

Anyone have one of these fitted? Any good? Seems like still nowhere very high up on the transom to grab and body weight will swing under the stern. Suppose it depends on the boat Osculati Flushmount Safety Ladder | Force 4 Chandlery

Yes, it works very well, but one has to learn how to climb the damn things. Climbing sideways is easy, but quite counterintuitive!

 

[Adios]

Have you tried that contraption, Mr T? I wouldn't want to have to rely on it.

A stiff ladder with rungs that extend 3ft below the waterline, is just about the bare minimum for average people's usability.

It doesn't look great. I'm not with the poor logic of having something useless for when you need functionality the most.

 

[Adios]

Yes, it works very well, but one has to learn how to climb the damn things. Climbing sideways is easy, but quite counterintuitive!

Don't you just swing sideways still? Do you have one and used it?

 

[dom]

Don't you just swing sideways still? Do you have one and used it?

That's the danger! - one can't use the same technique as a regular ladder where one just leans back and starts to climb.

The trick is to keep the forces vertical and there are a number of ways to do this which require a bit of practice. The advantage of going up sideways is that it encourages the climber to forget traditional ladder technique and switch over to rope climbing technique, which is of course what it is. Also the ladder has to have a suitable immersion because tucking one's legs up to start is very suboptimal. Depending on transom shape a handhold or two there can be useful

A fixed ladder is of course better but doesn't suit all boats.

 

[Concerto]

Anyone have one of these fitted? Any good? Seems like still nowhere very high up on the transom to grab and body weight will swing under the stern. Suppose it depends on the boat Osculati Flushmount Safety Ladder | Force 4 Chandlery

That was my solution after the problem I experienced and mentioned in post #19. This allows someone to just raise themselves sufficiently out of the water to use the boarding ladder. The boarding ladder can be used for support and being rigid will also help anyone out of the water better than the red handhold. I also altered the top fixing of the ladder from on the deck to on the transom and this made the bottom step 6" lower. As they say, every little bit helps. Having done this work I hope I personally never have to use it or get someone else to try it for real.

 

[prv]

At what point (size? speed?) do people stop using kill cords? I have serious thought about fitting one for my auxiliary.

Basically anything where the size and style of boat renders it unlikely that you’ll fall directly overboard from behind the wheel. The faster the boat the further you might get thrown, so speed feeds into it too.

Pete

 

[prv]

Who has a ladder that enables a middle-aged low-fitness swimmer to climb aboard?

I do - and last year we tested it in anger, too, when someone fell off a pontoon in the marina.

At first I was trying to help him directly back onto the pontoon with a loop of warp to stand on, but that clearly wasn’t working. In theory the marina has emergency ladders, but they’re quite widely spaced and hard to find. It would be a long swim around a lot of boats to reach one. So he half-swam, half towed on the warp I’d looped round him, round one finger pontoon to my stern and easily came up my ladder. Should have thought of it straight away, but for the first thirty seconds or so I was focused on trying to pull him straight out at the point he’d gone in.

I lowered the ladder for him, of course, but it is reachable from the water too.

Pete

 

[Frogmogman]

For situations like in that video perhaps the extended version "puton de merde" (no way thats spelled right) which I'm told means "prostitute of shit". Makes no sense of course but has some nice plosives for more expression in dire situations

Putain de merde.

You're welcome.

 

[Greenheart]

I do - and last year we tested it in anger, too, when someone fell off a pontoon in the marina. In theory the marina has emergency ladders, but they’re quite widely spaced and hard to find...he half-swam and easily came up my ladder...it is reachable from the water too.

Very few boats seem to be similarly equipped - particularly with a ladder that the swimmer himself can launch without knowing in advance that he'll need it. Seems like the right ladder can turn a man-overboard incident from shatteringly arduous and highly dangerous, to just inconvenient and uncomfortable, if it:

- has a bottom rung within easy reach of the swimmer's feet;
- is launchable from the water while in its stowed position;
- is rigid in use so the positions of its rungs are predictable and reassuring; and
- can be easily used by someone who's frightened and disorientated, without requiring practice or explanation.

I only had a quickly-deployable rope ladder in a bag, and didn't fancy testing it. So, I bought an aluminium five-rung. It still needed setting up in advance, and seemed disturbingly flexible - or perhaps I've got a lot fatter - but I wouldn't trust any kind of rope or wire tangle, least of all for when the casualty may be in shock, hypothermic or panicking.

 

[Stemar]

Not that a proper stiff ladder in a locker on board, or detachable guardwires that need someone on deck, will help the inadvertent swimmer who was single-handing.

That's why I'm a bit of a fanatic about my boarding ladder on the transom being able to be folded down from in the water. I tow my flubber, so I tied a small fender across the ladder to protect the tender if it bumped us. Then I had to do something in the tender, and had a Tom & Jerry moment resulting in "Oh, I could get wet here. Oh, I am wet" No biggie, the water was warm enough, but I couldn't get the fender off to use the ladder. Had I been alone, it could have been very nasty.

 

[Greenheart]

I suppose on a fold-down transom ladder like Concerto's, there's no good reason why the folding segment should be unhelpfully shorter than the fixed section...

...it seems to have been designed exclusively for tender-users, not swimmers. But if the folding section had as many rungs (or more) as the fixed, the same design could fold into almost the same small space, yet make it fairly easy for a swimmer to self-rescue.

 

[westhinder]

I lowered the ladder for him, of course, but it is reachable from the water too.

Pete

I have tied a piece of string on my swimming ladder, so it can be pulled down by someone in the water.
A couple of years ago, someone nearly drowned in our harbour in circumstances much like your description. After that the marina suggested that people should make their transom ladders deployable from the water. A good call imho

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

I suppose on a fold-down transom ladder like Concerto's, there's no good reason why the folding segment should be unhelpfully shorter than the fixed section...

...it seems to have been designed exclusively for tender-users, not swimmers. But if the folding section had as many rungs (or more) as the fixed, the same design could fold into almost the same small space, yet make it fairly easy for a swimmer to self-rescue.

I can't for the life of me remember who built them but there was a production cruiser/racer that had a ladder so long that it formed the gate for a central opening in the pushpit. It seemed so sensible and I've never understood why it wasn't widely copied.

 

[Beelzebub]

The X-99 had that arrangement. We used it in anger once when I went overboard in the middle of a race. I hung on to the sheet that I was handling as I went over the side. I was then able to pay out enough of the sheet to get to the stern whilst in the drink. The crew lowered the transom ladder and I was back up and racing in no time. We lost a couple of boat places but that was all.

 

[peteK]

Silly me, because of this sort of micromanagement Sailing Licences and Boat Permits - France - Angloinfo I assumed the French had a great respect for the sea and methodically preserving life, big on training courses etc

And then I see this horror show / comedy gold and now I'm confused! Amazing stuff though. And there are loads more. No life jackets of course, and what's a kill cord? "6ft breakers? great my 4hp outboard should be suitable". Favourite bit was when one of them start bailing while the skipper was still overboard. It all seems so contrary to the heavy regulation they have though.

This isn't in France its Haulover inlet in the US.Hence the lack of lifejackets.

 

[Beelzebub]

This isn't in France its Haulover inlet in the US.Hence the lack of lifejackets.

The first boat has a French flag. I'd put money on it being at Cap Breton in Nouvelle Acquitaine.

 

[Greenheart]

...there was a production cruiser/racer that had a ladder so long that it formed the gate for a central opening in the pushpit.

That's exactly what I was thinking, looking at Concerto's transom and pushpit.
It certainly is an obvious-seeming system that would surely save lives - like seatbelts, it shouldn't be a question of style or patent.

This isn't in France its Haulover inlet in the US. Hence the lack of lifejackets.

I hope you jest? That video made me think of Haulover, but it surely isn't the same place. If anyone enjoyed the antics seen above, and hasn't seen the numerous Haulover videos and others such as below, there is amusement awaiting you (and plenty of room to scorn our American friends)...

 

[mjcoon]

I have tied a piece of string on my swimming ladder, so it can be pulled down by someone in the water.
A couple of years ago, someone nearly drowned in our harbour in circumstances much like your description. After that the marina suggested that people should make their transom ladders deployable from the water. A good call imho

And a suggestion that would not cost the marina a single cent!

 

[Adios]

I hope you jest? That video made me think of Haulover, but it surely isn't the same place. If anyone enjoyed the antics seen above, and hasn't seen the numerous Haulover videos and others such as below, there is amusement awaiting you (and plenty of room to scorn our American friends)...

At least their beer cooler survived. It's size explains everything else

 

[Beelzebub]

I have tied a piece of string on my swimming ladder, so it can be pulled down by someone in the water.
A couple of years ago, someone nearly drowned in our harbour in circumstances much like your description. After that the marina suggested that people should make their transom ladders deployable from the water. A good call imho knew two people who

I knew two people who met their end by falling into the marina at night-time, with nobody else around. At the time the marina didn't have ladders from the pontoons into the water. Fortunately that changed but too late for those two guys.