Online Book: Crew Overboard Prevention & Recovery

Before we can come up with good and effective crew overboard prevention systems, we need to think about and clearly understand the risks we are dealing with, which I examine in this chapter.

We have written a lot about gear in our ongoing Crew Overboard Prevention Online Book, but all the gear in the world won’t keep you safe if you don’t heed this tip.

The key to crew overboard prevention is never losing contact with the boat. In this chapter I take you through an easy-to-use (with a little practice) system, which we have evolved over 20 years sailing offshore short-handed on our boat, that will enable you to stay clipped on at all times and still have the mobility and reach to sail your boat properly.

Despite the well-documented risks of being dragged after falling overboard, many (probably most) offshore sailboats are still using sidedeck jacklines, raising the key question: Is that solution worse than nothing? At last we have numbers to help each of us make that critical decision.

In the last chapter we examined the risks of being dragged and particularly tether tension. Now let’s relate that to the jackline systems we see out there in use.

In the last two chapters we discovered that the jackline systems most of us use for COB prevention are pretty much useless. Now we are moving on to what to do about that—the good stuff.

As boats get smaller, building a system gets more difficult and more compromises must be made, but it is doable.

Are you making or ordering jacklines to keep your crew safely on the boat? John takes a deep dive into the right material, stitching, and attachment techniques. This is truly a project where the details matter.

Our project to improve crew overboard prevention systems has been a long and winding three-year-to-traverse road. But we are nearly there. Here’s the first of two chapters on tethers.

In the last chapter, John wrote about the two different types of tethers he and Phyllis use on Morgan’s Cloud. In this chapter he follows up with the details of how they build each type.

Your harness, its fit, and how you use it are among the most important parts of staying safe on a boat offshore. In this chapter I share what we have learned in 140,000 miles of offshore sailing, most of it short-handed, about harnesses and lifejackets, the features to look for, and their use.

What about using a climbing harness with tether for Crew Overboard Prevention (COB)? John takes a look at this oft-suggested idea.

Can we stay safe just by following generally-accepted rules like always wear a lifejacket? John doesn’t think so and takes a deep dive into the issues we need to think about.

Assuming that we have decided to buy and use auto-inflated lifejackets, we have yet another decision to make: Which of the two available activation devices should we select, hydrostatic or dissolved tablet? John interviews an expert and makes a selection.

The Quick Stop crew overboard recovery maneuver has become the standard taught in most every safety at sea seminar. But how effective is the method really likely to be, particularly for short-handed crews offshore? John takes a look.

The availability of comparatively inexpensive, and proven effective, AIS/DSC COB beacons means that all of us must think long and hard about what changes we need to make in our Crew Overboard (COB) procedures. John and Phyllis share the recovery technique they will be practicing in future.