Panic

[billskip]

Just reading the post "one for the pundits"

wondered what you would do if one of the crew panic.

we were a crew of five in serious bad weather off northern france en rout to canaries and one of the crew "lost it"

I cannot begin to discribe his feelings, and the chaos, all turned out ok in the end.

just wondered what you would do if it happened on your boat and how you would calm them down,

 

[Guest]

I lied. I hid the weather forecast and plain lied, but it was the only way to save the situation.

I have lived with it the result for years now.

One of the first Atlantic sailors, I met, told a story about a crew loosing it in a big squall. He faked a problem that meant she had to hold something or they would be doomed. He increased the panic level until she felt that she, alone, was saving them. Adrenaline is good sometimes.

 

[sarabande]

We failed to drop fully a spinnaker approaching a rocky shore, and the naviguesser joined in the fun to help snuff it. Unfortunately, being unused to such things as wet decks and disobedient acres of canvas, he fell headfirst into the cokpit and bounced down the companion way, knocking himself out with a fractured skull, broken leg and severe sense of humour failure.

Fortunately a very good crew member (who happened to be a Royal Marine officer) patched him up, then tied him to the cockpit rails ready for medevac. In order to keep him from concentrating on his injuries, the casualty was given a chunk of rope wound round a spare winch, and told to wind like hell whenever asked to. The rope was attached to nothing in particular, but until we got back to the moorings, the casualty did nothing but wind on an unloaded winch exactly when told by the skipper.

I am convinced that providing a simple task (even if a "redundant" one) can prevent the human mind from descending into an introspective or irrational pit. The main lesson was that command and control was taken by a practised and thoughtful person from the beginning, giving a postive and hopeful objective to the casualty, who came back to sailing when mended.

 

[FullCircle]

I have wooden mallets left about the boat and a Tranq gun. The Crew know this and behave accordingly.
You can ignore that bit.

The only time this happened to me, my Crew just sat rocking backward and forward with his arms folded in a trance state, even hours after we got into Port. He hasnt been back since.

Certainly one of our crew was seasick in the Irish Sea, but when the boat sprang a serious leak and got to about calf level, he managed to break out of his torpor and managed a very impressive strike rate with the bucket.

 

[Evadne]

I am beginning to suspect that I would be the one who would need calming down. /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Seriously, I am pleased never to have had to face such a situation and have only admiration for those who have done so and lived to tell the tale. And not.
Some people react well to being told the truth, or being given real responsibility and will pull their weight to save us all quite unexpectedly, while others need the sort of placebo effect described above to keep them sane, how do you tell in advance, or even at the time, which is which?

 

[ChrisE]

I've had that happen once, when we lost our forestay in the middle of a transat. We had an inner forestay and the mast didn't seem to me to be about to fall but the panickee did. He calmed down after about a day or so, we just acted as though it was no big deal and eventually he thought the same.

That said, god knows what you do if you have the [--word removed--] luck to get caught out in a real hoolie.

 

[Largslout]

I lost it last week when I missed an episode of Howards Way which is being shown on Sky. SWMBO slapped me and plunged my head in a bucket of cold water. I remain in the Jack Rolfe rehab unit.

 

[snowleopard]

I've been talking to a friend who helped in the rescue of a MOB on the ARC last year. It seems the guy had mental problems and the disruption of his routine meant he didn't take his medication for several days.

Among other things he jumped overboard three times and threw lighted matches around the cabin. There were only two on board until two others boarded and helped tie him up. He was eventually taken off by the navy.

That was a bit extreme but I've heard of a good few cases where a crew member has retreated to his bunk because he couldn't cope. One of those was in Las Palmas where a storm caused a lot of the non-ARC boats at anchor outside the marina to drag and pile up on the harbour wall. On the one my crew went to help with, the skipper had gone below in a blue funk and his wife was on deck having hysterics. Our guys boarded the boat, started the engine and took it out to re-set the anchor. If they hadn't helped they boat would have been smashed.

I believe there was an instance where one of the professional skippers in the Chay Blyth RTW opted out and went below during the start in the Solent. That must have inspired confidence in the rest of the crew.

 

[fisherman]

But what would you do if the skipper 'lost it'? Agree with all the stuff about giving a crewman something, any thing, to do: on a fishing boat my size there's nowhere to hide anyway.