Minor incident on The Solent, well done medics

[ChrisE]

Yesterday, we went out for a tootle on my fishing boat taking aging mother-in-law, brother-in-law and partner plus Mrs_E over to Yarmuff for a spot of lunch. And very nice it was. too, that is until we set off back to Keyhaven when we hit a xx foot high wall of wake off some large fast thing. Partner of brother in law is thrown about a bit and lands on back with large cry and can't move noises.

Slowed right down and got to the quay at Keyhaven and called 999 for ambulance which arrives about 10 mins later. After much umming and ahhing, she is strapped to board and whisked off to Sot'on for X-ray which fortunately proved to be OK. She is now making her back up t'north with brother in law.

I was dead impressed with speed of arrival of ambulance and the care and professionalism of the paramedics.

Could I have avoided the accident? Not sure, my take is that it was just one of those things, I could rant on about wash but we'd all seen the wash coming and had previous skipped over similar adding a bit of excitement to the day. This particular wash was a bit higher and steeper causing us to fall off the back of the wave with a bit of a crunch. I guess I could have slowed, we were doing about 10 knots at the time, but then hindsight is always a great decision maker....

 

[savageseadog]

I'm not sure I'd descibe this as a minor incident.

All's well that ends well but only because you did the right things.

 

[LadyInBed]

"Could I have avoided the accident?"
Maybe, if you see it coming (Ooh! he's going fast, "Hang on everyone, it's going to get bumpy")
Then turn into wash and slow down to minimise it's effect.

 

[Sailfree]

Is it best to turn into wash or cross it at 45 deg?

 

[l'escargot]

I have been caught twice recently in the Solent by unusually high wash, once off the Shrape and once off Calshot. I've grown up in the Solent and am well used to the delays in wash from passing ships but on each occasion I couldn't identify the probable cause, it was too big to be from leisure craft but there was nothing else in sight.

 

[LadyInBed]

It depends on the height and period of the waves.
In a mobo
Long, high waves - up at 90° down at 45°
Short, low waves - slow at 90°

 

[nick1568]

Blowing my/our own trumpet a little bit.
But it's always worth giving the Coastguard a quick shout in incidents of this nature. Have had a couple of jobs like this recently and one common factor seems to be ambulance control often respond with a single paramedic in a car. There's obviously nothing inherently wrong with that but on occasion evacuating someone from a boat isn't always that easy. If you let CG know they will arrange an ambulance for you, and get a first aid trained CG rescue team down to meet you. If nothing else they are well trained manpower used to the marine environment available for "lifting and shifting". Another point to remember is Ambulance control quite often work on postcodes to pin your location down. By their very nature CG should know all the marina's etc in district like the back of there hand.

Hope thats of some help anyhow, not meant as a rant or anything jut a heads up for anyone in trouble in the future.

Nick

 

[ChrisE]

Nick, thanks for your thoughts.

As it happens the casulaty happened to be a physio and I asked her if she wanted me to call the CG and she said that given we were 10 mins from the shore she wanted to see how her back was before making a decision.

Regarding the ambulance response they sent a full sized ambulance and two paramedics. Part of the humming and haaing regarded whether to call in a heli or not.

If I'd been further out to sea clearly the CG would have been my first thought.

 

[Sniper]

Regarding sending a sole responder, the ambulance service will be wanting to a) hit their response time targets and b) ensure that a crew (i.e. ambulance) is indeed required. They won't be influenced by the alleged nature of the incident (i.e. what is reported by a lay caller) It also very much depends on what resource is available at the time.