Man Overboard!

[jschrade]

I don't want to take over the other thread, so started this one.

Honestly, I am quite surprised at the responses in the other thread.

Unless you are in calm water with no current and little breeze, a heave-to is a terrible idea. The boat actually makes way in a heave-to and the MOB may or may not be able to reach the boat. Note that PFD's are not very conducive to effective swimming.

The most important element in a MOB is to NEVER lose sight of the MOB this is predominantly how MOBs die at sea - it's simple lose sight and they are dead. There is no one-way to do a MOB as Catigale stated it depends on your circumstances. The motor gives control independent of the wind and does this whether connected or not connected to the steering linkage. Put the motor in the water and start it - if you don't need it then nothing is lost.

My suggestion is to toss a floatation device in the water, call out man-overboard and see how well you do in recovering it. It will likely illuminating.

Jim

[Sumner]

Another good reason to have at least one running GPS in the cockpit up and running. Just hit the MOB button and of course know how to use it to get back. We need to practice on that.

You can pick up a used one like our Map 76 for under $100. Pretty cheap insurance and if you sail with just one other person it is going to be very hard for them to keep an eye on you the whole time it takes them to get turned around and get back to you and loosing sight of the MOB can be disastrous as stated above,

Sum

Our Endeavour 37

Our Trips to Utah, Idaho, Canada, Florida

Our MacGregor S Pages

Mac-Venture Links

[seahouse]

The MOB procedure should always be a part of the passenger briefing (it's law, maybe?). Part of our routine is to instruct the passenger(s) that their one and only job is to point at the MOB and not to take their eyes off them. That should be their primary objective while anyone else onboard concerns themselves with getting back to the recovery point.

So add the number of souls on board to the other variables that influence your actions during the MOB procedure.

Never have done a "wet run" of this, but it's on the list.

While in university on a marine biology field course in the Carribbean we came close to losing a diver by losing sight of him. He would have perished as the current was swift and in the direction of the open sea. We did find him (and catch up to him) but it has permanently underscored in my head the primary importance of keeping sight of someone in the water. No GPS's back then.

[pokerrick1]

MOB is a MUST PRACTICE item! Mandatory

My problem was that I usually sailed alone on my daily sails, and my was going to sail away a "fer peice" if I ever fell OB with the sails set.

Rick

PS Moral of the story: don't fall overboard if you are sailing alone

[mastreb]

You're absolutely correct that loosing site of the MOB is deadly, which is exactly why I would likely heave-to as a first response. Failing to heave-to makes far more headway and gets the MOB out of site quickly. Often my next action would probably be to put the motor in the water and start it. But that takes far longer than heaving-to in my experience or at least with my motor. YMMV. Often I may not hove-to and simply come about--depends on the exact situation.

Certainly if there's significant wind or waves I'm dropping the motor immediately because you can't spend time trying to manage the sails in those conditions. However, 90% of the time I'm not in those conditions where I live. In any kind of wind, trying to manage a MacGregor with its boards and its canvas out, with a motor running at speed, and attempting to return to an exact spot quickly will be frustrating, and you'll have to spend time trimming, reefing or dropping sails to keep them from powering the boat in opposition to what you're doing with the engine. Without a crew that can do that while responding to an emergency, it's going to get complicated quick.

Now, I've never actually had a man overboard. I have had a companionway board overboard, hat overboard, life-jacket overboard, and boat-hook overboard however, and retrieved them all in short order without anyone getting wet. The boat hook took longest, because we didn't have a second boat hook with which to grab it. We didn't drop the motor in any of those cases. Twice we heaved-to and then rounded about, and twice we came about, and in both cases it depended mostly on which side the item was with respect to the boat.

My kids do swim off the transom all the time and we haul them back aboard with a floating lifeline routinely. 100' of floating lifeline attached to a float that you can toss off the transom while circling about the MOB is a great way to go if the MOB is coherent and swimming.

The best advice is to assess quickly, and have all of these skills and tools at your disposal.

[jschrade]

Hats have been lost and hats have been saved! Oh, and one floating radio has been saved!

MOB is a MUST PRACTICE item! Mandatory

My problem was that I usually sailed alone on my daily sails, and my was going to sail away a "fer peice" if I ever fell OB with the sails set.

Rick

PS Moral of the story: don't fall overboard if you are sailing alone

[jschrade]

Still not seeing the the heave-to, you'll simply drift. Do you mean come about?

Jim

[mastreb]

Still not seeing the the heave-to, you'll simply drift. Do you mean come about?

Jim

No, I mean heave-to. Once you heave-to, coming out of a hove-to by reversing the rudders is pretty quick, turning the boat completely around in place without a lot of motion in any direction and setting you on whatever heading in the opposite direction that you want to come out at. Presuming (big assumption) that the MOB is behind you, this is generally what you want and since the rotation from a hove-to is very tight, it can be faster than circling around under power. I would be putting the engine in the water the entire time I'm executing any of these maneuvers however, because there's zero reason not to have all options available.

If it's obvious that coming about is going to be faster, I'll certainly do that instead.

I think a big part of my resistance to automatically going to the motor comes from the fact that every time I've dealt with an "object overboard" situation thus far it has been in my Columbia, which could do eight knots under sail and maybe three under power with it's 4hp Honda (unless you're going against the current, in which case it could do 0 knots). All my experience and practice with this stuff is under conditions where the motor just wasn't the great option that it is on a Mac.

[mastreb]

Moral of the story: don't fall overboard if you are sailing alone

Funny story: My friend lost his footing and went overboard while single handing. Deck was wet, he was not wearing boat shoes, and he slipped while going forward topside outside the stays (the boat was narrow and it was his habit to sidestep along the windward deck edge while holding onto the stays). He loses his footing, but holds onto the stays, tries grabbing a fender but it goes over the side, and he winds up slipping down along the stay until his hand hits the turnbuckle swage near the chain plate and it opens him up pretty good. He lets go because of the pain and drops into the water.

So now he's in the middle of San Diego bay, bleeding, treading water, and watching the boat sail off without him. It was a tiller rudder he'd tied off before going forward. It wasn't a busy day on the bay being a weekday, and nobody had seen him go in, nor was there anyone else within shouting or waving distance. In the water he took his shirt off and tied it around his hand as a bit of a bandage.

Just as he's committing himself to a two-mile swim to Coronado Naval Air Station (along with probable arrest upon stumbling ashore), he notices that the boat has been arcing to starboard and suddenly "autotacked", with the jib backwinded. As soon as it did that, it started doing pretty tight circles because the tiller fell to the side it had been tied to.

So he starts swimming towards it. He watches it gybe, and now its coming basically right at him as the tiller fell back against the robe and straightened the boat out. So he starts swimming to intercept, and winds up grabbing the fender he'd knocked over the side when he fell out as the boat passes by him. There's no transom on this boat and it was very difficult to board even from a dingy, so he's exceptionally lucky there was anything he could reach at all. After being dragged a few hundred feet hugging the fender, he manages to get a hand and then foot up on deck and hauls himself aboard. Gets the first aid kit out, fixes up his hand as best he can, and brings the boat back in to the slip.

Not funny part: It was my boat.

[Sumner]

I notice that most of us are talking about what "we" would do. Now how well would our wife, girlfriend or sailing buddy for the day do if "we" were the one going over the side and they had to come get us and they are alone in the boat. We have only sailed once with another couple in the boat and they had no clue how to do anything on the boat.

If there is only one other person in the boat, do they know how to lower/start the outboard? If it is a small outboard, not a X or M, can they even start it if it isn't electric? Do they know how to at least release the sails? Etc, etc. It would be pretty sad to be in the water knowing what to do, but also knowing that the person in the boat doesn't or can't do it.

And why they are trying to do the above have they been able to keep sight of you? Once you loose sight of something on the water it is very hard to go back to that exact location unless you are very close to shore and have a good reference point.

I"ll still stick by my earlier suggestion that the very best thing is to have a GPS and immediately push the MOB button. Then once things get under control and that person finally gets the boat stopped if they can't find you or get back to you maybe the can get help to come via the radio, especially if the radio has DSC. Then they can at least show someone that knows something the GPS and the last know coordinates of your location.

When I screwed up my shoulder and fractured it on Lake Powell...

http://purplesagetradingpost.com/sumner ... ll-09.html

...and Ruth couldn't start the outboard and we sat there for a couple days before I could start it and we saw no one some of this started to come into perspective.

We now have an outboard with electric start. We always have a GPS running both underway and at anchor. We have a VHF with DSC that will also send out a distress and give our GPS location in an emergency automatically while we are dealing with the situation. We both carry a very good rigging knife that will cut a line 'right now'. Ruth has made up two large first aid kits and we have drugs to ease pain and stuff to stop sever bleeding and so forth that we didn't have before. We still probably haven't covered everything and hopefully won't have to use the above items, but when you are in a very remote area like Lake Powell in Utah or in the 10,000 Islands of Florida or crossing Florida Bay out of sight of land or anyone else they are somewhat comforting.

Have a good time, but be safe,

Sum

Our Endeavour 37

Our Trips to Utah, Idaho, Canada, Florida

Our MacGregor S Pages

Mac-Venture Links

[jschrade]

Still not seeing the the heave-to, you'll simply drift. Do you mean come about?

Jim

I think a big part of my resistance to automatically going to the motor comes from the fact that every time I've dealt with an "object overboard" situation thus far it has been in my Columbia, which could do eight knots under sail and maybe three under power with it's 4hp Honda (unless you're going against the current, in which case it could do 0 knots). All my experience and practice with this stuff is under conditions where the motor just wasn't the great option that it is on a Mac.

with 50+ HP the game is completely different. If the wind waves and current aren't working, you can override them.

Sumner, if you have someone else watching the MOB, then play with the GPS. If you do not, keep your eyes on the MOB. Lose them and they are dead. We searched for them all the time and never found them. "One second he was there and the next he was gone" is the most common phrase in people lost overboard. Heads are very small objects in the sea.

There is no one scenario and knowing how to do it under sail and power (just in case that motor doesn't start) is a good idea. In the end, it's the confusion on deck that causes people to lose track of the MOB. In the ICW, I would be stressed that they would be run over by the idiot power boaters and need to get close ASAP to protect them.


Jim

[Sumner]

....Sumner, if you have someone else watching the MOB, then play with the GPS. If you do not, keep your eyes on the MOB. Lose them and they are dead. Jim

I agree with you that you don't want to loose them. You don't have to 'play' with the GPS, you just push...



.... the MOB button on the front of almost all marine ones like on the Garmin above (upper left button), that we have running in the cockpit and/or on the Cuda 350 (lower left button)...



...also in the cockpit right next to.....



... the person on the tiller. That takes maybe a couple seconds.

If you are by yourself in the cockpit I don't think it is reasonable to think you will never take your eyes off of them. At least if you hit the MOB on the GPS you now know where to go back to within a few feet. Hopefully you do never loose sight of them, but what if you do and you haven't marked where they last were?

Of course this is everyone's personal decision to make on what to do. I just hope if I go overboard that Ruth hits that button.

Sum

Our Endeavour 37

Our Trips to Utah, Idaho, Canada, Florida

Our MacGregor S Pages

Mac-Venture Links

[pokerrick1]

Not funny part: It was my boat.

I would have loved to have been there to watch the changing expressions on your face after you asked him "how'd it go today"?

Rick

[Metromate]

A MOB pole is the best way to mark the location of the 'lost soul'........providing of course that the event is recognized immediately or at least while the person is still in sight. The pole gives the captain and the swimmer a common target. Add a light if out much at night.
Does not need to be big - maybe 8 ft long with a fluorescent streamer or flag. Buy one or make one and then practice deployment/recovery with the least experienced person doing the drivin' - one never knows who is to go for the swim!

[Catigale]

Two more points

1. Read the manual on your GPS tonight so you know HOW to activate POB/MOB

For Garmin, for instance, its PRESS and HOLD the MOB button.

2. We keep at least two, and often four, throwable cushions in the cockpit when we sail. If anyone goes over, we start throwing cushions. Even though we all have our PFDs, it gives us a trail of stuff to see and track, as well as giving the POB something to wave overhead too !!