Lifesling

[bigmart]

Re: technique...

The point I was trying to make was that the difficulty really arrives when you try to retrieve a casualty. In many ways the getting back to him/her is the easy bit.

Trying to get someone out of the watewr 7 onto a heaving deck can be difficult beyond your wildest dreams & that is the part of training which gets little more than lip service.

Didn't Rob James die in this way & from what I read that guy on the ARC may have suffered a similar fate.

Many years ago, on a calm day in Studland we tried to winch a 14 stone man back on board a small Yacht. The experience made us all a lot more wary about the danders of going overboard.

Martin

 

[Reap]

Re: technique...

This is true recovering a body from a heavy sea is almost never practised and would be unimaginably difficult.
A lot of people on this thread talk of sailing back to the man overboard! But take it from me as an RYA Instructor you should never ever do that unless your engine fails. During all RYA courses you are taught to recover man overboard under power and it should be stressed that you only sail back if there is no engine.
Any instructor who says otherwise I think you will find is not acting in accordance with RYA instructions.
Imagine if you tried to sail back, failed to get there, tacked and failed again, what would you say in coroners court to the question....so Mr X why exactly didnt you start the engine?
During my instructor assesment in a force 9 I had to recover a surprise MOB practice. We were under trysail and the boat would not tack, I had to take her round in a gybe and managed to recover it, but it was a wing and a prayer stuff.
In reality start the engine and do it in a controlled fashion.
Yes, if under sail you should probably crash tack, its the quickest way to stop and if you are lucky you will drift close enough to throw them some bouyancy. But this is only if you are lucky.
Most are assuming that you will see them fall overboard, do not assume this and even if you do, in a rough sea you will lose sight of them within only a few yards.
Where are they? Throw the dan buoy over as a reference point.
Of course always send a mayday by the time you have (hopefully) recovered them the S.A.R. helicopter will be on its way. It would bbe a shame to recover them only to lose them to hypothermia.
Sorry to rant but I feel strongly about thhis one!!

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[jcr]

Re: technique...

the guy fulfils that role only when the spinnaker is full and drawing properly. After a crash tack. the spinnaker will be aback. The spinnaker boom is then free to swing back and forth.

jcr

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[bedouin]

Re: technique...

I think in a real MoB situation, unless I had a full crew on deck, I would just let go all the sheets/guys and halyard and get the spinnaker in the water as quickly as possible.

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[qsiv]

Re: technique...

We never, ever set the kite without a foreguy, otherwise the pole end can lift, and chafe will destroy the guy itself in hours, added to which the shock loads as the pole pants would strain the deck gear excessively. You only have to feel/hear the loads in a 20mm dyneema guy to realise how big the loads are - last year we blew a 16mm guy with the kite up and 32 knots AWS in Biscay. Fortunately we had a a spare guy pre rigged, which held.

The pole end just hast to be fixed in space by the guy, foreguy, topping lift.

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[jcr]

Re: technique...

The ONLY way to secure the boom is to have topping lift, downhaul/foreguy, guy(which holds the clew up to the boom) and the extra line secured between the end of the boom to a strongpoint in the cockpit. This way, the boom is absolutely secured in position, regardless of what is happening to the spinnaker and its standard guy. If the topping lift, downhaul and the extra line are untouched, the boom will stay in position regardless of the point of sailing.

If a crash tack is done with the boom secured in this way, the spinnaker will be aback and can be dropped on the foredeck just as easily as a genoa.

As I said in my original post, this is impractical if racing because there is this extra bit of string to manipulate. If shorthanded and there is plenty of time to plan a manouvre the extra bit of string is a minor problem compared to the security of having the boom under control

jcr

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[qsiv]

Re: technique...

I guess well have to agree to differ.

My pole is always fixed in 3 dimensions - you cant send the bowman out along a pole thats thrashing around, and damages gear in any event.

I just couldnt contemplate this excercise in more than about 12-15 knots of true wind. The increase in apparent wind as you round up would probably shred most spinnakers, so it would be academic.

Lets assume we are going downwind in 20 knots true wind, at about 140 AWA. My boatspeed would be about 8 knots- so about 12 knots AWS, which implies a medium weight kite. As I round up the boat speed will climb to about 10/11 knots, as the AWS rises to about 27 knots. The medium kite will start to fail at about 18 or 20 knots AWS, so the chances of surviving this are slim - even before we get anywhere near the tack part.

Out of interest how windy was it when your instructor performed this tack?

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