Nov 29 2009
PLAN ZERO
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Photo: Chris Tucker Sailtime
Chris Tucker in his Sailtime Blog has some great pictures of a near disaster this weekend in Channel Islands harbor. He makes an excellent case for having a PLAN B when things don’t go as planned.
Chris points out that these guys probably could have avoided scaring the hell out of themselves and damaging their boat if they’d had PLAN B.
I submit that if they’d had PLAN ZERO and PLAN A, they might not have found themselves in distress at all.
PLAN ZERO?
That’s basic training – knowing your boat and knowing how to handle it in all sorts of weather. PLAN ZERO also includes basic weather watching and presail preparation and establishing Go/NO-Go criteria.
Look at Chris’ picture. Does that snarly water on the outside of the jetty look like a place for a 22′ boat? Only on a bet, a dare or if the captain is drunk.
Could the crew in question have known that the weather was going to be snarly? Maybe they did check the forecast. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe they got fooled.
Hindsight tells us they should have reefed before they headed back in. Maybe they didn’t know how; maybe the boat wasn’t rigged for it.
While we’re here, talking about downwind survival tactics, I strongly disagree with Chris when he says
A good plan B could have included releasing the main and jib sheets prior to running into the rocks.
When you’re off the wind releasing the mainsheet will just drive the sail against the spreaders. You can’t simply “luff out” the main at that point. You’ve got to head up, too.
We make that point in training when we’re landing the Capri 22 with a 90 degree crosswind. If you parallel the dock with a 90 degree crosswind, the sail will be driven into the spreaders and you’ll be powered up and off to the races once more. Better to learn that in calm seas with 8 knots rather than 20.
What else could they have done to avoid being the butt of jokes and blogs and Monday-morning-skippers?
The textbooks says you can depower off the wind by releasing the vang. That’ll twist off some wind, but I doubt that would have done much good under these conditions. You can also bring the main all the way in – the opposite of what you do to gain speed downwind. Finally, and this would have been my choice if I could not reef the main, I would drop it and sail on jib only. The Capri and Catalina 22 handle quite nicely on jib alone. (Small Hunters, too.) I’d also start the engine on any boat. The surge coming around the breakwater can round you up quite smartly even in moderate winds. You can probably sail out of that, but the engine gives you maneuverability insurance.
PLAN C – drop everything and motor in.
PLAN D – when the seas are too high to proceed downwind i.e. you’re frequently rounded up even after reefing or the surge near the breakwater is too large, you forereach until conditions settle. And that may be a while.
Lifejackets. Chris’ report says this crew put them on but only after they were in trouble. My PLAN ZERO says my crew and I wear lifejackets any time we’re underway. Your PLAN ZERO should include a time to put on lifejackets. My specific lifejacket event is getting underway, yours might be with the occurrence of some other event, say when you decide to reef or when you take the first wave over the bow or when your wife starts wimpering.
It would be interesting to know what sort of training this crew has had and what they discussed before they threw off the docklines.
If you have comments on the incident, please write them below. Your additional points will do the most good if everyone can see them here.
see you on the water
/capt dan
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“Does that snarly water on the outside of the jetty look like a place for a 22′ boat? Only on a bet, a dare or if the captain is drunk.”
I surely think “Stupid” should be the fourth option…
I think Friday was definitely a “Plan Zero” day. Even a cursory WX check should have convinced any prudent sailor to stay ashore. There was nothing equivocal about the forecast. And like you say, a quick peek over the breakwater should have extinguished any doubts.
I’m glad you addressed the techniques for depowering downwind; I was doing a little head-scratching on that one. But it almost sounds as though things happened so fast , that even given a “Plan B,” and a heap of luck, these guys may have still wound up on the rocks. So another case is made for Plan Zero.
So I cancelled my sailing plans for Friday and Saturday, and instead did my navigating through
a good book with a good bottle of red as a crewmate. One cool thing about being a sailor is that we don’t have to feel guilty about such indulgences. Not our fault we couldn’t go sailing…
Great Blog Capt. Dan and I couldn’t agree more. Down in Dana Point the weather and seas hit us while we slept on board Friday night. We could hear the building waves thundering a low rumble through and over the breakwater. At 2 AM we decided to roll out of our bunk to take a look. The stinging wind and sight of monster waves pounding the granite boulders made me very glad we were safe and snug in our slip. Morning’s light revealed lines of huge swells many losing their tops to the northerly wind, no place for me nor my Canadian built sloop.
I am an experienced sailor. I know my ability, I know my boat, it’s rigging, it’s readiness, my safety gear and I have the eyes to look to seaward and say “no way dude”!
Any Plan is good only if you’ve some common sense. It seems these guys lacked training, experience, knowledge of their vessel and most importantly an ounce of common sense.
The weather down in San Diego wasn’t that bad Thanksgiving weekend, but bad enough for me not to venture off shore until Sunday. By then the forecast looked pretty benign, so I decided to head out around Point Loma and up to Mission Bay to drop the hook for the night. Even though the forecast was for winds of 10 kts or so, I went with my usual practice (when single handed) of wearing a PFD with safety harness, and setting up one tether clipped at the base of the mast, and a second clipped to the toe rail at the fore deck. This lets me stay clipped to the boat even if I need to go all the way forward, even though the boat is not rigged with jack lines. The rule on my boat: do not leave the cockpit when single handed unless clipped to the boat.
As things turned out, the wind blew close to 20, and I had to reef both the main and the 150% genoa to keep control. And, as luck would have it, for the first time in 4 years with this boat, the furling line for the genoa got fouled on the deck cleat at the bow. I was very glad to have not skipped the step of setting up both tethers before casting off. Got the sails reefed, and still made 5 knots close hauled — and best of all the boat was comfortable enough that the autopilot could resume holding a steady course with no trouble. What could have been a dicey outing remained an enjoyable ride.
Had not heard the term “Plan Zero” before, but it fits. Keep up the good suggestions, Dan.