Man Overboard (practice)

Mar 20 2008

Man Overboard (practice)

Published by Capt. Dan at 08:46 under Sailing

There are no pictures in this post. We were too busy hanging on to get the camera out of the bag. So let me set the scene: It’s the last day of ASA 103 (if things go right) for Dan Reilly. He’s done great so far, picks up every skill on the first try. Though he just finished ASA 101 a month or so ago and has had little practice, he’s done everything very well.

The scene at sea: Aboard a Catalina 36, 25 knots out of the NW, gusting to almost 30, 4-6 foot swell with wind chop on top, swells coming at a painfully close interval.

So it’s time to launch Grandma for MOB practice. If you’ve done my advanced training on MOB, you know that I teach a hybrid. When we lose the person on a close reach, we do a Quickstop. When we’re on a broad reach, beam reach or running free, we go to a broad reach and execute a figure eight. I also teach that in a seaway (or when there is extreme wind or no wind) we crank up the engine.

Prior to the festivities, we clipped in – the student, who was driving clipped to the backstay and I to a padeye in the cockpit.

“Man Overboard,” Dan, the student, shouts – “keep pointing at her! Throw the buoy!” And, even though we’re close hauled, we decide to do a figure 8 – a jibe just looks too iffy even though we’re all set to do one.

The driver mashes the MOB button on the GPS and we head off on a broad reach. But wait a minute, that’s putting us dead down-sea and we start to surf. Not a great idea, so we head dead downwind, which is about 30 degrees off the swell direction. We’ve furled the jib and the main is cranked in tight – we’re as depowered as we can get without dropping the main.

Grandma disappears behind each swell – and she’s trucking downwind at a great rate. This started out as a textbook drill. Now we’re trying to keep it from turning into goat roping.

We maneuver to about 100 yards dead downwind of the victim (picture textbook flying over the side). We crank up the engine and ready the boat hook and approach her about 30 degrees off the swells. We keep her upwind of us (textbook sinks) and she slides gently alongside. If she were a conscious victim, we’d have thrown her a line, secured her to the boat and called for Coast Guard assistance. But she’s an empty lifejacket. The boat rises on a swell, squishes into the wave which squirts grandma 10 feet away – about 3′ more than I can reach. We’ve got bare steerage way and are forced to fall of again and repeat the maneuver.

It’s a little less thrilling the second time around and although we don’t rely on the GPS, it does serve to keep us oriented when she disappears. We execute the maneuver as well as the first, but this time she snugs up alongside and we grab her.

If this were a human, the real challenge would just be beginning and we’d call for all the help we could get. If we were on our own, recovery would be a slow and bruising process involving securing the victim to the spinnaker halyard and winching her aboard, all the while making way underpower. It would be very, very tough with two experienced and at least one very strong crew member. Think of the difficulty if you were alone. Think autopilot.

The moral of the story has nothing to do with Figure Eights, Quick Stops or Capt Dan’s Hybrid – the moral is clip in and hold on.

The moral is rig jacklines if there is any indication you’ll have a rough passage and rig jacklines and clip in even if it’s flat calm and the sun is down.

Share on Facebook