Man overboard needs external help for rescue

[grumpy_o_g]

Talbot is suggesting that there is a growing number of these type of people in society; however they have always existed. I don't think the number is growing because the numbers requiring assistance don't suggest that. The growth in leisure sailing has not seen a steeper growth in those requiring assistance.

I'd agree with that. One of the biggest changes is in the ability to call for help and the ability to send help. These day just about everyone has a VHF of some sort and most boats going offshore have DSC - very few of even the posh yachts in B-o-C had VHF back in the 70's. Certainly the equivalent of a 30' AWB wouldn't even have thought of installing one. Then to helicopters have much greater ranges and are actually cheaper now in real money terms. It's not surprising the emergency services are called out more often really. The fact that we had to cope made us self-sufficient but that didn;t mean we wouldn't have liked to have been able to call out the lifeboat or hydraulic palm tree on ocassion.

 

[Juan Twothree]

I'm similarly concerned about a news reporter working for 'Britain's favourite boating magazine' who doesn't have the wit to realise that neither Newhaven nor Dover are anywhere near the Solent,

I find myself wondering quite what skills Ms Kitching brings to the job....

Obviously saw a mention of Solent Coastguard (who coordinated the job), put two and two together and came up with five.

 

[bobgarrett]

When I did my sailing courses (e.g. Coastal Skipper) admittedly some years back we covered MOB only in as far as getting back to the casualty and "hooking them". The issue of getting them back on board was talked about but not really tackled.
My own club (Chichester Cruiser Racing Club) did an exercise a couple of years ago supported by the RNLI and a magazine. From being at anchor (so avoiding the "get back to the MOB" challenge) we are tasked on each boat to get our MOB back on board. We each had different ideas and made the challenge more or less easy by, for example, pretending there was only one person left on board. So handy-billies were used, halyards and winches, main sheets rerouted, nets and all manner of methods. We all learnt a lot and truly realised what a problem it can be.
There was a video produced but we don't own the copyright so I am not sure whether we can share it. I will check.
As for the original question, yes I think as a society we are looking for support from others more, but where life is involved I think that is only right. Calling a mayday does not stop you still taking a DIY approach while waiting.

 

[LadyInBed]

MAYDAY good, it will probably be heard by someone close by with a better craft for picking someone out of the water, and it can always be cancelled if the person is recovered. In these circumstances there's a danger to life, so MAYDAY is entirely appropriate.

+1

Note the advice on using the liferaft. This is probably easier, quicker and a more flexible approach than complex MOB recovery gear (particularly that involving the boom, because you'll need to drop the main first).

This also struck me as a good idea.

 

[BlueSkyNick]

MAYDAY good, it will probably be heard by someone close by with a better craft for picking someone out of the water, and it can always be cancelled if the person is recovered. In these circumstances there's a danger to life, so MAYDAY is entirely appropriate.

Note the advice on using the liferaft. This is probably easier, quicker and a more flexible approach than complex MOB recovery gear (particularly that involving the boom, because you'll need to drop the main first).

SWMBO is fully briefed to launch the life raft if I go in the oggin - sod the expense of repacking it.

Also, Even when the casualty has been recovered precautions still need to be taken against secondary drowning so the CG should at least be aware of any situation.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

If the liferaft solution to MOB fails to achieve its objective, what are you going to do about it? It's a rhetorical question and I am not interested in answers because this subject has been covered well in other threads.

The proponents of the chuck over the liferaft solution could be considered to fall into the OPs category about lack of self sufficiency, which is what this thread is about.

 

[Barnacle Bill]

When I did my sailing courses (e.g. Coastal Skipper) admittedly some years back we covered MOB only in as far as getting back to the casualty and "hooking them". The issue of getting them back on board was talked about but not really tackled.
My own club (Chichester Cruiser Racing Club) did an exercise a couple of years ago supported by the RNLI and a magazine. From being at anchor (so avoiding the "get back to the MOB" challenge) we are tasked on each boat to get our MOB back on board. We each had different ideas and made the challenge more or less easy by, for example, pretending there was only one person left on board. So handy-billies were used, halyards and winches, main sheets rerouted, nets and all manner of methods. We all learnt a lot and truly realised what a problem it can be.
There was a video produced but we don't own the copyright so I am not sure whether we can share it. I will check.
As for the original question, yes I think as a society we are looking for support from others more, but where life is involved I think that is only right. Calling a mayday does not stop you still taking a DIY approach while waiting.

Interesting exercise, but you might be more inclined a) to use the boom, because you haven't got a flappy mainsail trying to gybe it, and b) not to use the liferaft because it will have to be re-packed.

It's quite instructive to approach the problem from the other direction. What do you do if you want to routinely, efficiently recover people from the water to a 35 ft yacht? This is a pretty basic question if you are a diver, using a sailing yacht.

My answer is: use the rubber dinghy tender, tied alongside. It also helps if the guardrail is on clips, so that it can be dropped.

Hence 2 bits of advice: 1 Elderly couple cruising, v difficult, say, for wife to recover husband? Answer: tow the tender behind the yacht. 2 Struggling to recover someone in a real emergency? Answer: deploy the liferaft.

I've only once had to recover real MOBs from the water. 2 guys had the bright idea of diving off a booze cruise boat on the Douro river in Porto. We were tied up, and could see they weren't going to make land with the current. So we called them to swim to us; threw them a warp; dropped the guardrail; and with a good hand hold (gripping each other's wrists) and lifting with my legs, straight back, I was able quite easily to haul number 1 up till he could get a leg onto the deck. Number 2 was about 17 stone, so it took number 1 on one arm and me on the other. But: on that occasion, absolutely no drama for a reasonably strong fit person to haul someone onto a 35 ft yacht (with normal topsides) in this manner.

So with a couple of strong people on board and reasonable conditions, don't ignore the bleeding obvious ...

 

[Barnacle Bill]

If the liferaft solution to MOB fails to achieve its objective, what are you going to do about it? It's a rhetorical question and I am not interested in answers because this subject has been covered well in other threads.

The proponents of the chuck over the liferaft solution could be considered to fall into the OPs category about lack of self sufficiency, which is what this thread is about.

OK, to spell it out - you don't just chuck the liferaft in and hope for the best. You deploy the liferaft, hold it alongside the yacht with the painter, get someone (or yourself) down into it, and pull the MOB into it. Then both of you climb back on board. Sounds pretty self sufficient to me!

 

[Deleted member 36384]

OK, to spell it out -........ Sounds pretty self sufficient to me!

I certainly don't need it spelt out, nor do I disagree with the liferaft as a platform to retrieve a MOB from the water. However, what are you going to do if it does't inflate, or you can't get the unconscious MOB into the liferaft? Again it's a rhetorical question because things that happen at sea have a frequent habit of not conforming to ones expectations.

I have experience of a yacht at sea with a liferaft alongside. The stationary yacht is drifting onto the liferaft as expected, the undercurrent is quite difficult to manage. Now a man alongside a hull that is drifting is pushed along with the hull in a stable position, alongside the liferaft he is being pushed under the liferaft; man between the liferaft and the hull the tube is nearly getting dipped into the water as one is attempting haul the man in, the risk to inverting the liferaft as it drifts with the yacht increases if that tube goes under the water. Now, how are you going to get two people out the water, alongside your boat?

The point is the your "spell it out" procedure might fail. This is the point about being self sufficient and coming up with alternative solutions that work. A liferaft is good when an inexperienced crew cannot accurately get the boat back to the MOB or can not get the MOB onboard. It gives the MOB potentially somewhere to go to and await rescue by others or allows the crew time to prepare the yacht with the MOB out the water. All boat owners should have a method of getting unconscious crews back on board from the water when the MOB cant help themselves.

 

[BlueSkyNick]

I certainly don't need it spelt out, nor do I disagree with the liferaft as a platform to retrieve a MOB from the water. However, what are you going to do if it does't inflate, or you can't get the unconscious MOB into the liferaft? Again it's a rhetorical question because things that happen at sea have a frequent habit of not conforming to ones expectations.

I have experience of a yacht at sea with a liferaft alongside. The stationary yacht is drifting onto the liferaft as expected, the undercurrent is quite difficult to manage. Now a man alongside a hull that is drifting is pushed along with the hull in a stable position, alongside the liferaft he is being pushed under the liferaft; man between the liferaft and the hull the tube is nearly getting dipped into the water as one is attempting haul the man in, the risk to inverting the liferaft as it drifts with the yacht increases if that tube goes under the water. Now, how are you going to get two people out the water, alongside your boat?

The point is the your "spell it out" procedure might fail. This is the point about being self sufficient and coming up with alternative solutions that work. A liferaft is good when an inexperienced crew cannot accurately get the boat back to the MOB or can not get the MOB onboard. It gives the MOB potentially somewhere to go to and await rescue by others or allows the crew time to prepare the yacht with the MOB out the water. All boat owners should have a method of getting unconscious crews back on board from the water when the MOB cant help themselves.

I have a much better strategy than working out how I am going to get somebody out of the water in every possible circumstance - make sure nobody goes overboard in the first place !!!

At least the guy in this story was clipped on but he still went in.

It all comes down to complacency and carelessness, IMVHO.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Interesting exercise, but you might be more inclined a) to use the boom, because you haven't got a flappy mainsail trying to gybe it, and b) not to use the liferaft because it will have to be re-packed.

It's quite instructive to approach the problem from the other direction. What do you do if you want to routinely, efficiently recover people from the water to a 35 ft yacht? This is a pretty basic question if you are a diver, using a sailing yacht.

My answer is: use the rubber dinghy tender, tied alongside. It also helps if the guardrail is on clips, so that it can be dropped.

Hence 2 bits of advice: 1 Elderly couple cruising, v difficult, say, for wife to recover husband? Answer: tow the tender behind the yacht. 2 Struggling to recover someone in a real emergency? Answer: deploy the liferaft.

I've only once had to recover real MOBs from the water. 2 guys had the bright idea of diving off a booze cruise boat on the Douro river in Porto. We were tied up, and could see they weren't going to make land with the current. So we called them to swim to us; threw them a warp; dropped the guardrail; and with a good hand hold (gripping each other's wrists) and lifting with my legs, straight back, I was able quite easily to haul number 1 up till he could get a leg onto the deck. Number 2 was about 17 stone, so it took number 1 on one arm and me on the other. But: on that occasion, absolutely no drama for a reasonably strong fit person to haul someone onto a 35 ft yacht (with normal topsides) in this manner.

So with a couple of strong people on board and reasonable conditions, don't ignore the bleeding obvious ...

I've had experience of getting into an inflatable dinghy after immersion in cold water . When a reasonably fit teenager (I would have spent the rest of the summer heaving boxes of soap powder around), I had to dive to get a rope off the propellor of my Dad's boat off the east coast of Scotland. I dived three times, and got out of the water into the inflatable after each dive.

After the first dive, I could get out of the water into the dinghy without assistance.
After the second dive, I needed assistance from one person. I MIGHT have managed on my own.
After the third dive, I could NOT get into the dinghy unaided - and it took my dad and my brother working together to heave me into the dinghy. I THINK - my memory may be faulty - that they had to partially deflate the tube to reduce the freeboard to get me in.

I was in the water for no more than a minute or so at a time; as long as I could hold my breath.

I did get the rope off the propeller!

Translating that into my current situation, if I went overboard I'd certainly be in the water for considerably longer than I was on that occasion. On one hand, I'd perhaps be warmer as I'd be fully clothed; on the other hand said clothes would substantially increase my weight. One benefit of the Sea Survival Course is going into a pool fully clothed in wet-weather gear and discovering exactly HOW heavy it is - I reckon it nearly doubles your weight when full of water. I was only just able to climb out of the pool, even though the water wasn't cold. So, I'd expect my capacity to self-recover to be as in the third case above. My wife is half my weight, and she couldn't heave me into an inflatable; we don't usually have any other crew aboard.

In our case, our rule is to be clipped on while on deck, and my wife's instruction in case of my going overboard is to hit the big red button.

 

[Barnacle Bill]

... The point is the your "spell it out" procedure might fail. This is the point about being self sufficient and coming up with alternative solutions that work. ...

Sorry if I offended you, but I don't get the link between using the liferaft (not the only solution, or always the best one) and lack of self sufficiency.

It's just another tool, often overlooked, which opens up a number of different recovery options in different situations.

 

[Talbot]

A lot of people on this thread have confirmed use of liferaft as a good start point. IMHO there are some significant downsides to this approach

1. It may be viable for coastal work, but if you use it in mid ocean (and have to subsequently destroy the raft to recover) you have lost the main safety system for fires or collission damage.

2. The raft alongside the boat will prevent any further manoeuvring, and runs a significant risk of getting a rope around the propellor.

3. It still does not answer the problem of getting the casualty back onboard.

Having experimented with different length ladders, short ladders are impracticable for getting people out of the water unless they are young and fit. They demand that the person in the water uses primarily arm power to get back onboard. Whereas a longer ladder allows the use of leg power to make the ascent. Leg muscles are MUCH bigger than arm.

I had a ladder on my last boat that extended over 2.5 ft underwater. This is obviously vulnerable when the boat is moving through the water, so I had the ladder mounted amidships (avoids the vertical movements at bow and stern and possible brain damage/drowning from being knocked unconscious by the boat - it also keeps the casualty and ropes away from the propellor). But you need a rope from the bottom of the ladder to secure it to a suitable spot forward and one aft to provide support to the ladder and prevent it breaking. Do NOT use this if the man has been in the water for some tie, they will need to be hoisted whilst remaining horizontal. raising them vertically can lead to heart failure.

 

[lw395]

I seem to recall that there has been at least one MOB case where the sole remaining crew went below to send a Mayday, with the result that he lost sight of the casualty, who was not subsequently recovered.

I suspect this may be an urban myth?

But in any case, someone who couldn't stop the boat adequately while making a mayday call would perhaps have failed to pick up the casualty anyway?

 

[chanelyacht]

Mayday call every time. We can stand resources down on route, we can't buy back time.

Given that report says Brighton is in the Solent, I'd wonder about their other statements too...

 

[chanelyacht]

I suspect this may be an urban myth?

But in any case, someone who couldn't stop the boat adequately while making a mayday call would perhaps have failed to pick up the casualty anyway?

Not a myth, I've taken a call like that myself.

Not a nice incident.

 

[prv]

Not a myth, I've taken a call like that myself.

Not a nice incident.

It's a large part of the reason I've fitted a cockpit remote in the new boat, now that the chart-table VHF is more than an arm's reach through the hatch.

Pete

 

[Uricanejack]

See http://www.pbo.co.uk/news/534336/yachtsmen-recovered-after-falling-overboard for the story.

So lets see. This story has one man overboard in a lifejacket and tethered to the vessel. There are two people left onboard. But they needed the assistance of a lifeboat in order to recover the man. If we stop at this point and just assume this is the situation without any concern about health of people onboard or in the water, this highlights a growing tendency to get someone else to come to your rescue, rather than working out how to do something yourself. (Please note that I am not casting aspertions on the people in the story, merely using the starting point of the story to illustrate a growing problem in our society).

Does anyone else feel concern about this lack of self-sufficiency.

Personally I would be ashamed of this - a call for assistance to get an injured person ashore as soon as possible is fine, but if you need external assistance to help do something as simple as this, perhaps you should not be at sea.

No.

Though I never ask for help. This realy anoys the misses

 

[BrianH]

I had a ladder on my last boat that extended over 2.5 ft underwater. This is obviously vulnerable when the boat is moving through the water, so I had the ladder mounted amidships (avoids the vertical movements at bow and stern and possible brain damage/drowning from being knocked unconscious by the boat - it also keeps the casualty and ropes away from the propellor). But you need a rope from the bottom of the ladder to secure it to a suitable spot forward and one aft to provide support to the ladder and prevent it breaking. Do NOT use this if the man has been in the water for some tie, they will need to be hoisted whilst remaining horizontal. raising them vertically can lead to heart failure.

As I sail single-handed I have always made sure that I have a permanent stern ladder that can be swung down from water level with enough depth to get at least a knee onto. I think this is a fitting that would help a crew recover someone as well as an essential safety feature for lone sailors.

Of course it can be difficult to reach if clipped on - usually means unclipping - even impossible to reach if underway on autopilot, as well as dangerous in a seaway, but it's better than nothing and I wouldn't go to sea without one.