Yachtmaster MOB Method?

[jwilson]

A revealing exercise is when moored to a pontoon on a warm day, have a hefty teenager in a wetsuit jump overboard and try to retrieve him without his/her assistance.

 

[Graham_Wright]

My biggest fear is with an unconscious MOB. I would like to try capturing him (or in my case, her) with a floating line and a circle round the casualty.

Thereafter, it has to be a winch line. Probably a halyard as it has the best chance of clearing, or nearly clearing, the hull when winching aboard.

 

[thinwater]

The thing about disasters at sea, and MOB in particular, is that they are not always singular events. It's not just "oh, Bob has fallen over the side," but "We had hooked a line with our prop, and Bob was leaning over to investigate and splash". Or "That kite drop went bad, and there are many ropes and half a sail in the water, Bob was trying to help and lost his footing and fell in I started the engine but one of those ropes wrapped itself around the prop,"

The interesting thing I've found over the years was that when I did YM I'd not done very much racing at all, just grown up cruising. MOB under sail in a F6 during the exam was the single most difficult bit of sailing I had ever done at that point. Took me a good couple of attempts to get back to the fender.

A couple of years back, we were out in pretty breezy conditions, about 25 knots, and after racing someone lost a hat. I decided to do a MOB under sail for practice and a bit of fun, and because he really liked his hat. All those years of holding the boat on the line and tacking for small gaps etc had really, really sharpened up my boat handling. Frankly the task of sailing up to the hat and stopping the boat next to it under sail was just so much easier than it was without that background of racing.

When we manoeuvre a boat under engine with the goal of putting it in a specific place we tend to do so on flat water in a harbour, not with the boat bouncing off waves. When we manoeuvre a boat under sail looking for gaps on a start line etc, we're doing so on open water. Because of that experience, in bouncy conditions I'm not 100% sure I'd be faster under engine than I would under sail, and especially in the new boat which is pretty light and has twin rudders, so no propwash to kick the bow against the wind.

Rope and kite in the water? You may not be sailing either, because the kite won't let you steer and one is likely around the rudder as well. Just sayin', been there too. And for most cruisers, "kite in the water" is not a risk because they don't have one.

Everything is boat specific. Sailing and motoring in waves is different. To compare cats to monos, for example, the "draft" methods are tough with multis because the keeps are shallow and windage is higher. But motoring is simpler, because with two engines, attitude control is quite easy. Also, many don't point well or tack well, particularly under main alone. Many will NOT tack under main alone. But they will if you have the engines at low RPM, just as pretty as anything.

It's about evaluating the situation and choosing the most reliable method. Yes, we should practice picking up hats in gale conditions, but alas, most drills are in boring conditions. I did pick up a dinghy sailor once, way out from shore in force 7. Used the motor and it was piss easy. I could have sailed, but it just didn't occur to me to try, when it was serious. With twin engines, motoring is more reliable (and remember, I would have to have a double engine failure; even more unlikely).

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This is not meant to be an agressive debate. I like reading other peoples' methods, since they might present something new. My last boat and my new boat were completely different in MOB methods, almost nothing in common. Underway, not that different, but tacking and manuvering slowly in waves, no similarity at all, power or sail. Had to relearn the drill, and that is after 40 years of sailing. Which, of course, is what keeps sailing new.