Manoverboard

TheBoatman

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Re: Prevention

Tome
If you read the posts, I was suggesting that Mirelle had already given up. A floatation suit is very often used by fishermen but not by yachties. It can be a single or two piece suit which, apart from giving floatation also gives protection against cold water. If he believes that his crew can not recover him from the water then he should consider "surviving" until outside help arrives.
I would also add that once overboard there is no "racing certainty" that you would be rescued? That is why the CG take the problem so seriously.

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LadyInBed

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Re: an answer

Having the luxury of an electric anchor winch, it would be possible using the same method that my daughter uses to get me up the mast. Halyard once round the mast winch then three times round the anchor winch.
Probably very difficult in lumpy conditions.
Given that the person over the side is conscious and capable of assisting, I wonder if a loop in the end of the halyard used as a foot stirrup might work and be more comfortable than a line round the chest.
If the boat is rolling this could be used to help when taking up slack.
With a rolling boat, I reckon the stern ladder would be the best place to board on my boat. Though if the boat is pitching, that is the last place I would want to be.


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tome

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Re: Prevention

Hi Boatman

Fully understand what you are saying about staying alive, but the reality is that in our waters you would very quickly succumb to hypothermia. I don't know a single fisherman who would wear a flotation suit as they work hard on the back deck and it would be too cumbersome. Too may fishermen are lost at sea, check the stats.

Whilst acting as the skipper of the fast rescue craft my crew and I had to wear survival suits. These were all-in-one quilted dry suits with built in hoods, gloves and wellies. They were so hot that we'd leave the hood down and the top of the zip undone. They'd have been a fat load of good had we gone over.

To my simple mind the only way to approach a MOB is to prevent it, and I think this is what Mirelle was saying.

Regards
Tom



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kilkerr1

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Re: Prevention

You've reminded me of another thing I keep meaning to ask - stern ladders. Most boats seem to have them - either they fold down pretty low into the water, or are telescopic, so ditto. What exactly are they for? Are they safety features mostly, or just for boarding the boat after a nice swim in calm sunny conditions? It would seem that if you managed to haul a MOB back to the boat then a ladder which extended into the water would be a seriously useful thing (if the person overboard were conscious/uninjured/etc.). We have a folding ladder which extends quite deep into the water and have never actually used the thing for boarding the boat from the tender, electing instead to do the splits and hang from the stays. I've never quite been sure why though...

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MainlySteam

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Re: Prevention

Our stern ladder gets mainly used for getting into and out of the dinghy and has proved usable in any sea condition safe for the dinghy (the design of the stern helps - not much slope, little overhang and broad). It is impossible to climb out of a dinghy, unless very athletic, let alone out of the water onto our boat without using a ladder. When anchored for more than a short stop, or when using the dinghy we always leave the lower section folded into the water in case of accident, even though it is deployable from the water.

Keeping this in the context that any rescue of a casualty from the sea is going to be difficult in rough seas (after all, that is why the problem is so perplexing), I think that in a yacht with a short overhang at the stern that self rescue on a stern ladder that extends down into the sea is always a possibility and would always be my first shot on our boat (having looked at the problem in quite rough seas).

John

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Mirelle

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Re: Prevention

Yes, that is just what I am saying.

I agree with what The Boatman says about the immediate use of a distress call; I doubt if survival suits are very practical in a sailing context, but an oilskin coat and trousers will retain a little body heat.

Some years ago my sister volunteered to be the "guinea pig" for some CA tests of MOB recovery systems, off her own boat, which had low freeboard and no lifelines, waring a wetsuit, in summer. Her conclusion was very firm - it is much more dangerous than you might think, and don't fall overboard!

I am very zealous about always wearing lifejackets in the dinghy, and do on. I don't think I have known anyone who was lost overboard at sea (I have known three people who disappeared at sea, with their boats, so I cannot be sure) but I have known two people, both of whom had sailed for years, who were found drowned in our river where their boats were on their moorings.

A harness and jackstay is inconvenient but the more you wear it the more you get used to it.

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qsiv

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Re: Prevention

I'd say stern ladders are just for swimming and boarding - the rise and fall is too aggressive to make them useful at other times. Indeed there are plenty of occasions when we cant use ours to get back aboard, and go back to using the gate in the lifelines. It also puts the casualty materially closer to the propeller, and out of reach nearly all lifting assistance.

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qsiv

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Re: Prevention

You'd be surprised how much heat simple kit will retain. SWMBO spent 1.5 hours in January seas, at night and didnt die of hypothermia - sure she was very, very cold (within 1.5 deg C of being unrecoverable), but 1.5 hours is quite a long time, and much longer than the accepted duration. She was wearing only nightdress and, very thin fleece, shoes, and a Barbour. I'm quite convinced that without the Barbour she would have died, but it must have retained a layer of water around her rather like a wetsuit.

It seem that hypothermia survival is somewhat of a lottery - an otherwise fit twentysomething male was fished out and died after only 12 minutes in summer conditions - and there was only hypothermia as a cause of death.

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DeeGee

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Re: Prevention

It is not our practice, but our friend's - when conditions warrant lifejacket and harness (night, weather) - they wear wetsuits as their first layer. OK things are a bit pongy at the end of a longish passage, but... we are thinking this could be a good idea, and we have drysuits from dinghy days carefully packed away in the loft...

This summer, we over-tided in Arromanches. Other cruisers were enjoying a swim in the luke-warm water. I couldn't be bothered to blow up the tender, and we don't have a boarding ladder. We do have a warping drum on the windlass, so we thought to try sorting out a mob recovery so we could go swimming. (Without sorting something there was no way to get back aboard, we aren't fit enough to use knotted ropes etc). The warping drum didn't work out, as there was no easy way to get the lead from the bow to a lifting point without fouling something, and that made it very jerky and exceptionally uncomfortable, also the distance from the winching point to the mob made coordination difficult. What it would be like in reality beggars belief. We have decided to work on this, and have something we can deploy on passage, ready to go.

We haven't yet sorted out the best way to fasten the mob to the apparatus, but the parbuckle looks favourite.


<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by DeeGee on 07/10/2003 10:24 (server time).</FONT></P>
 

Gunfleet

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tackle it

Viv, a 6 part tackle attached to the mains'l halyard and 'wound' from the mast halyard winch is easy to set up and will either lift you out of the water or pull the boat down into it! I keep mine in an old sailbag in a cockpit locker and I keep the line in order with woolen ties, otherwise you'd risk fetching a rat's nest out of the bag just when you're on the edge of panic (or your wife is).

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Sailfree

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Thanks for everyones contribution. I asked the question as in our few years experience of sailing I consider it to be the greatest risk, especially after a few earlier experiences capsizing while racing dinghys.
We currently have a charter coded boat that therefore has Jackstays (and we use them at night and in rough seas) & Danbuoy. We use Musto Ocean waterproofs hence plenty of reflective tape. We carry a pack of minifares at night. While the boat has 10 gas manually inflated lifejackets as part of the coding we invested in two hanmar operated ones with crutch straps and I fitted a strobe light to these ( we always take these with us as our personal sailing kit).
I have used the rear boarding ladder when diving to free ropes around the prop etc and concluded that the stern would brain someone in anything like a sea.
I like the suggestion of using the electric anchor winch but will need to try it as it is operated by footbuttons and that person would then need to be some 5-6 m away from the casualty.
As we hope to start the first of our extended cruises next year ( 3 months to the med & back - crossing the bay of biscay) hence my question.
Next time out we will practice getting boat back to MOB, and try lifting me a little using both winch and electric windlass. Even with extra crew on board I am not sure about the full practice- it is getting cold now!- but might try it if I take my drysuit out of retirement!

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jamesjermain

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Parbuckle does work

The parbuckle system of recovery does work - I know, I've tried it. A makeshift parbuckle using a sail - storm jib for preference - is difficult but OK. The proprietory parbuckle, Tribuckle, works very well. The only drawback is time, specially if it is not on deck and ready to deploy. Also, it is useless unless the crew knows what to do and how to set it up and use it.

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DeeGee

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A thought that just occurred to me is that, like us, you will be two-handed, and your partner is probably fast asleep below, off-watch.
If you look at the mini-ttransat site, there is a poor Italian guy who has apparently been knocked overboard, and the boat is (still?) sailing on.
This would be your fate, unless you had some proactive means of getting some response.

The next generation of autopilots should have some system with a keepalive timer, where you have, on your person, a dead simple box, broadcasting a pulse (on Bluetooth, perhaps, v low range) which is required by a simple receiving box. If the signal isn't rec'd the a/p is driven to steer the boat into a wind angle of 0deg rel.
This sudden change in behaviour would not only stop the boat pretty quickly, but disturb Jane's sleep! Such a radio pulse might even be used to drive some leds on the receiver to indicate your direction.

I am sure that something like this, or maybe something even simpler, like an outboard motor keepalive wrist-strap, could be devised.

(Anyone who wishes to steal this idea and make a commercial offering is quite welcome, please let me know so I can get in the queue to buy one).

PS Just had an idea for the o/b cord equivalent... tie a string from the jackstays to your partner's big toe. If you go over, your lifeline will pull her leg, and save a lot of money on more electronic kit!!
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vyv_cox

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I beg to differ...

and still maintain - try it! I have a six-part mainsheet with a snap shackle connection to the traveller with the intention that this attaches to a lifting strop. That's the system we used. Without a winch it was just too difficult to haul upwards on the free end and I was unable to lift Jill from the water. Leading the free end to a winch via a turning block made the job possible but not easy because of the boom's tendency to swing towards the centre of the boat, plus I suspect that the combined friction of seven blocks is now so great that it almost exceeds the force that I could apply. I could lift Jill from the water but she struggled so much to lift me using the same arrangement that I was almost suffocated before being half way to on deck.

The intermediate solution is to have a snap shackle at the top end of the mainsheet system and to invert it before trying a rescue. Hopefully this will give a much fairer hauling angle and no winch will be needed. We have yet to test this tackle. Ultimately I think that the parbuckle will be better but there is little doubt in our minds that remaining on board is by far the best option.

Mainly Steam - I have recently bought a Maxwell windlass with a single gypsy. Removing the chain from this would be a major exercise, so unfortunately your suggestion would not be appropriate.

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Gunfleet

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Re: I beg to differ...

Hi Vyv,
I think we're talking about a different kind of arrangement. THe boom plays no part in mine. I have a seperate pair of triple sheaves ready to go when I need them. In my 6 part the top sheave is attached to the main sail halyard, which is cleated off at the mast so that the top sheave is a bit above head height from deck. The bitter end or tail is led to the mast winch and this is very easy to do - a couple of feet in a straight line. The lower sheave is attached to whatever you want to lift out of the water. so now you have 6xwhatever your winch is, probably together a minimum multiplication of 24. If I've got the numbers wrong I'm sure you'll correct me - you're the engineer, I'm not (staring out the window in physics classes). Eitherway it is a very powerful lift and fetches the subject up right by the shrouds. I expect if the subject was ill or unable to help they would lift up easily in the mainsail, which you could attach by the headboard to the lower sheave. You're quite right, I haven't done it with a human and I haven't done it during a gale. But it's the best I can do and I reckon is quite close to your parbuckle.

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AlanPound

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Earlier this year we fitted an NKE (French) autopilot to our Ketch. It has a small wireless remote, about 3.5" diameter, with a lanyard to fit around you neck.

If the autopilot master computer looses the signal from the remote, then (if it has wind information) it turns the boat into wind, or it will simply go in circles...

A bit hard on the boat perhaps, but should wake up any sleepers (and almost anything would be better than seeing the stern disappearing over the horizon)...

Alan

PS the Autopilot has a built-in rate gyro (as well as using a fluxgate) - when you see the advertisments from RayWhoeverTheyAre saying that their autopilot is revolutionary as it is the first with a rate gyro, then recall that NKE have had this thing for some time...


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kesey

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Here's an excellent article by John Rousmaniere on the subject of mob:

http://www.ussailing.org/safety/Studies/1998_lmsrf_study.htm

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Fair winds,

Adrian

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vyv_cox

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Re: I beg to differ...

John,

There's not a great deal of difference between our arrangements, it's only that since I already have a 6:1 arrangement as the mainsheet it seems a little extravagant to buy another for a situation that I hope will never arise. I have no winches on the mast but I do have exceptionally large genoa sheet winches which I assumed would be the best for the job.

I have carried a 4:1 tackle, shackled to my lifting strop, for years as a MOB recovery system. I never tested it and, when I eventually did, found it to be utterly incapable of doing the job.

Using a sail as a parbuckle is probably OK in light winds but my reading suggests that it becomes uncontrollable in wind and seas. The commercial version is made of netting similar to the stuff used for catamaran trampolines and this is what we will use. Assuming this to be hauled by a spare halyard it will give only 2:1 advantage, so will need to be led to a genoa winch. This will require at least one turning block, so here we go again!

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Mirelle

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Re: Prevention

I heard this afternoon of a male guest aboard a Thames barge, alonmgside in a London dock, who fell overboeard in September and was dead by the time the skipper had jumped down into the boat - which was astern on its painter - and sculled round to recover him. Autopsy said heart failure - but it was a very few minutes....

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qsiv

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Re: Prevention

I'd go for that - the shock of cold water can easily kill a person - it killed a boy at school when he went for an early morning dip. It also mucks up your breathing reflexes as the big chest muscles contract on entry to cold water and hinder the expansion phase of breating. This then leads to struggling, and quite frequently drowning. I'd be surprised if someone were to die of hypothermia in under 5 minutes in the Thames - it's likely to be significantly warmer than the open sea.

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