What a tangled web we weave

[bilbo]

I've learnt a lot over the years by reading what my elders and betters recommend, then thinking hard on't. Of course, it all blurs with time, but I occasionally re-discover the source of some practice or prejudice, and find myself re-confirmed. This from Sir Robin Knox-Johnson's account of the 1978 RTWR, and in particular his musings over a MOB recovery incident where little went smoothly.....

[quote]I had a four-man liferaft put just behind the helmsman for just this sort of emergency, but in the event no one thought to throw it over. neither did we throw over the marker buoy because with all its clutter of lights, drogues, dye markers and so on, it just could not be cleared away quickly enough. For the right reasons, yacht safety equipment has been made too complicated, and this negates its effectiveness. The simplest safety item to throw over was a lifebuoy, and it worked. Other safety equipment wants to be as easy to release and throw.[/quote]

Having recently spent about 20 minutes dis-entangling a friend's rear rail clutter - two-handed trip, offshore, dark and blowing; think about it - there's reason enough to revisit this common snarl-up issue. Trouble is, some people don't seem to want to examine, analyse then 'do something'.

[Julian]

Agree 100%, I have been trying to work out the best set up for us.. including throwing out the odd question to my crew on how she might use the gear I have been dutifully tying to the rail for the past few years.

For example, this weekend the ILB was sent to a couple who had stranded on a sand bank, knee high with a flooding tide. We were too far to help, many were not!

Anyhoo, this did not stop me asking what she might do and which gear might be useful if we were close enough to help. She did quite well with only a little prompting, including throwing the horseshoe that is connected to the boat to assist pulling people to the stern ladder, using the throwing line, dinghy, and even driving the boat aground so they would only have to walk through 2" 6' water (it was a sheltered location). If I keep doing this, I hope if she is ever alone trying to get me, things will be natural.

Maybe it seems patronising and some might think this stops a pleasurable sail if I am in teaching mode, I don't know a better way.

Part two.

I am rather worried about the dan-buoy, it is a Jimmy Green model and I still have not found a pipe wide enough to slip the weight in. It is currently held on with a pair of elastic ties with those little red clamp thingies. I am not sure under panic she would have the confidence to just cut them. The other thing, it is telescopic, I threw it in the oggin a couple of weeks ago; mainly because I had never tried it out.

I was rather shocked how low it floats in the water, without extending it is next to useless as a marker, then there is the flag in the bit of hose (flaked after advice from TOP). I need to attach a bit of string to pull the hose down and release the flag, but will all this make launching impossible..

Horseshoe (attached with lift-off elastic)
Light (clipped under horseshoe)
Drogue (in a bag attached to rail, we designed the bags to allow release of the drogue and floating line attached to danbuoy)
Danbuoy (currently stored unextended, flag packed, badly attached to rail)

Looking about, this is not an unusual set-up. The other horseshoe is the same minus danbuoy, but connected to the boat with around 12m of floating line.

------------

My thought on a launch pipe maybe to cut a slot down the length of the standard 38mm (is it) grey water household waste pipe. Then site it at an angle so the danbuoy shaft is within the pipe and can be lifted out easily; as we don't heel, this should be stable enough, but I am all ears if anyone can advise me a better way.

sorry for the ramble on and on and on....

[Windfinder]

Maybe it seems patronising and some might think this stops a pleasurable sail if I am in teaching mode.

I find it so when people do this. Makes me cringe.

[bilbo]

Numerous groups/orgs/committees have tried to work out what works and what doesn't, plugging into the best experience around, and the answers are out there.

Here's my partial take on the MOB discussion, based on practical RAF S&R experience. The gear on the pushpit/in the cockpit is 'survival equipment' - it must work right, first time, every time. Seconds count - everything that slows down the response has to be removed. Various clubs/orgs/mags have run sea-trials, and the minimum recorded 'No Notice' response time, from someone shouting MOB to throwing a life ring is 5 seconds. Most times were much in excess of 12 seconds - and frequently a couple of minutes, due to entanglement of string. A sailboat doing 6 knots covers over 50 feet in 5 seconds, or 16 metres. No-one managed to throw a foam lifebuoy 50 feet from a moving cockpit.....

Try it yourself, with your crew on the helm, using a small fender/bucket combo, and a stopwatch. Call 'Man Overboard - Practice!' as the combo passes the rudder, have them throw the lifebuoy and recover everything. Time them and photograph where the lifebuoy lands in relation to the 'casualty'. Discuss in the bar.....

I would recommend a first-use lifebuoy, with NO attachments, within arms length of the helmsman. I would have another made up as a LifeSling - or a proprietary product - tied to the pushpit. I would have at least one marker-pole with light, preferably two, in plastic tubes secured at an angle to the pushpit. I would have a dedicated recovery snatch-block and a netting parbuckle triangle - each with snaplinks -, as per RORC .jpg, in a bag handy to the cockpit. I would also have an £8 TPA bag, same as the lifeboats and rescue helos, for hypothermia treatment, somewhere handy.

And, for those who say "I'd do this and that differently", I pose the question "You are, by far, the most likely to go overboard. How well would your crew manage to recover you?"

The images below, which I carry in a sleeve folder, show the RORC guidance on QuickStop, Lifeslings and Hypothermia treatment....






Acknowledgements to the RORC and US sailing.

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d78/b ... G_0001.jpg
http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d78/b ... G_0002.jpg
http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d78/b ... G_0003.jpg

[bilbo]

It's appropriate to agree/confirm that 'Prevention Is Better, Cheaper, Easier Than Cure'. FWIW, I carry two personal lifelines, each made up from a sewn loop of climbers' tape and a pair of commercial Gibb snaplinks; this assembly is more than twice as strong as the majority of chandlers' offerings, at less than half the price.

I attach one lifeline at the helming position, for anyone helming to use, whenever thought warranted - night; single-handed in cockpit; well lumpy; frit..... I carry the other one for 'roaming'.

Deck-run jackstays are contentious. Whatever they're made of, the RORC recommend - no, insist on - a minimum breaking strength of 4500 lbf/2040 kgf, and there are very few webbing arrangements I've seen that come even close to that. Those that have been left lying on the deck, degrading in UV for a couple of seasons or more, are little more than decorations.......

[Julian]

Maybe it seems patronising and some might think this stops a pleasurable sail if I am in teaching mode.

I find it so when people do this. Makes me cringe.

How can I share my knowledge and experience on board otherwise.

It is not like I pull up a school desk and blackboard, last weekend it was more lighthearted, a sort of 'if we were there and I could get the boat into the shallows, how could you help them to the ladder?'

We were just motoring along in the sun drinking coffee, listening to the radio. I thought it an ideal time to get both of us thinking about recovering a couple of people from the water. One day it might be me. I am worried now that I am driving people nuts when I do this...

[bilbo]

Ey-oop, Julian. This is 'Shooting the breeze', not 'Shoot the messenger'. It's surely the right place for this stuff, so have a debate/barny/discourse/stramash with me, and let whatever bampots happen along throw buns from the sidelines.

Old 'FlatulenceFinder' can leave and go read something elsewhere - and Nick's preaching hell and damnation in The Other Pulpit like an old-style WeeFree Meenistair giving it laldy on a wet, windy Sabbath in Callanish, while the packets of peppermints rustle in the back rows.....

...with about as much effect. He's fighting uphill, I'm afraid, and he's getting close to the 'personal insult' stage , so I reckon he'll be back on here shortly, before he changes his sox and kecks, and bumbles down to the pub for a fume and grouch.

[Telo]

I think Julian is right to consider those issues with his crew - how it's done is really down to the individuals and their relationship. In our case, there are rarely more than the two of us on board, so it's something we think have about.

We have screwgate karabiners at both connection points on our mainsheet (see pic). This can allow one person to reverse it very quickly and use the boom and mainsheet as a crane (assuming the sail's been dropped, although could raise other issues eg running the engine).

This (we hope) gives us a reasonable chance provided the victim is still conscious and still able to clip the krab to their harness. Unconscious, I rather doubt that our chances of survival are high. I've never tried gathering an inert object in a semi-submerged sail, but, single handed, would imagine it being extremely difficult in anything above a F3.

[bilbo]

......I've never tried gathering an inert object in a semi-submerged sail, but, single handed, would imagine it being extremely difficult....

Like getting a certain DS to bed in Tobermory?:lol:

BTW, nice fotty.....

Ahem, the pro S&R training Her Britannic Majesty forked-out for all those years ago insisted that 'the first priority is to re-establish a secure attachment between the casualty and the vehicle'. Once that's done, you've bought time.....

Getting someone secured alongside in a LifeSling, head well out of the water - even if t'other half can't rig the hoisting gear - will give precious time for a lifeboat/other yotties/ rescue helo to get there. It's what the VHF/DSC Big Red Button is really for.

[Julian]

what is interesting on Bilbo's post is the sailing back to the casualty.

I have always said to my squeeze, let the sails flap and start the engines to come back to me. Might not be clean, but tacking a cat back to spot, although entertaining is not as simple as spinning a mono about.

There is also the issue of jib sheets being 13ft apart, although workable with day to day lone watches, add panic and the geography of the boat would cause problems.

I would much prefer to pay out for a torn sail than be erm, dead I think.