General Safety

Unfortunately through tragic events, we all start thinking about the What If situations.

General safety should be at the top of our minds at all times, and we can think about 'It was a cat', oh the weather turned, etc... but isn't good seamanship... not how fast, far or well you sail (or drive for those wind less floaters), but coming home with crew and boat in tack.

It happens, it's not if.... it's when.
Dumping sails is a fraction of running a boat safely

Encourage any builds on below, however safety extends beyond de-powering a rig:
First aid kit
Seacocks (and where they are and what they do), and plugs on tethers tied to them
Epirb (Batteries and location known by all aboard)
Floating torch with leash
Emergency Tiller
Radio
Anchor and rode lengths... and tied to something strong
Knife in handy location ( yes it always lives in the same spot)
PFD not buried under sails, beer cases etc
Ditch bag with something that floats, shines, and preferably calls
Bilge pumps.... filters/floats test them
A bucket
Bolt cutters
A tarp or spare sail... yes it can help if holed or jimmy rig
2nd anchor and rode, spare rope... grounding and out going tide!!
Fire extinguisher
Flammable liquids that flash to vapour upstairs or vented well
Loose batteries, crappy wiring
Gland packing on shafts or a backup idea
Grip on slippery surfaces
Critical McGiver spares.... amazing what some rope, shackles, wire, bolts/nuts can fix


etc
etc
etc

i know the list goes on, again please add critical thoughts so we all can take it with a grain of salt and apply to what suits each individual... can't have everything.... no where to put it, but we can decide what's important for your own situation and live with it

Oh...and a Plan B.... when things just go way to wrong....
Old saying, Crew falls apart before most boats... doesn't apply to a keel boat with a below water line gash in the side... get the tender, SUP, or anything that floats out and call your insurance company

Incidents are not just for Offshore, for most of us, in our nice comfortable cruising areas in protected waters....unfortunately there's more stuff to hit, and Leeshore is a whole lot closer...

Speaking personally, while doing my recent buy and fix up, I've spent some coin on toys, gadgets and cosmetics... and quite a bit on safety..... but still yet to get some flares... and other important stuff that I hopefully never use.
We all have our piggy banks for boat stuff, understand some have bigger pigs than others... but on your Saturday trip to Whittworths /Bunnings or the like to get some important piece of stuff that you convinced yourself you need.... keep in the back of your mind.... Not If.... When!!
And throw one simple something, one at a time into the basket every couple shopping trips, and tell yourself you never want to use it.......but.... in case

Rant Over, Fair Weather and Good Winds my fellow water monkeys

Cabron

You have not mentioned the most important thing by far.

you can' t but it at Bunnings or whitworths

you did not buy any training!

--Tether. This is where I disagree with Sailing Australia, where regs disallow a quick release on the harness end of the tether. 3 point tether with one short tether for foredeck work, with a quick release on the harness attachment point. I don't want to get dragged and drown.

Me too Shaggy.....
I reckon it's time for a re-design of tethers.
regards to all,
allan

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lydia said..
You have not mentioned the most important thing by far.

you can' t but it at Bunnings or whitworths

you did not buy any training!

+1

Training and Experience should of been on the top of the list.

100% agree, as a newbie, though having had a couple seasons of twilights and plenty of water/weather/adventure sport time, prior to buying my first boat, doing the RYA Com Crew, and Coastal Skipper was valuable training, at the time I thought.... hey their not teaching me how to sail, but reflecting on it, they drummed in some great 'how to stay safe and run a boat' lessons, then also fortunate enough to have a few others take me under their wings cruising for months on end where you live and breath keeping afloat 24/7...
I still can't trim a sail well... but the experience taught from others has been invaluable... right down to the point of being thumped into me not to trust Nav software but use your eyes/ears/sensors , having seen Navionics/Opencpn and Maxsea would of parked us on many reefs passes, bombies and the rest...

When learning any new activity that carries inherent risks, I heard a saying.... everyone has 2 jars, one full of Luck and the other empty one of Experience, you start with a full jar of Luck, and through each series of epics/missions/episodes, you take a little luck from its jar, and put it in the Experience jar.... eventually the jar of luck is empty, and all you've got left is a full jar of experience...

No one knows everything, nor can you buy experience in a shop , keep your eyes and mind open, learn from others and learn from your own mistakes ... and enjoy it along the way, however though no matter how much experience any one has, without basic preparation and having some tools in your Plan B tool kit... your pretty much on your own, and experience alone can't fix/repair the 'When' time, however it can offset the 'If' time if you've still got some Luck in the bottom of the jar...

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shaggybaxter said..

lydia said..
You have not mentioned the most important thing by far.

you can' t but it at Bunnings or whitworths

you did not buy any training!

Thanks Lydia, I forgot MOB drills. Out of all the MOB procedures I've witnessed, I still like the RYA method the best.
Which means adding the obligatory spare rope they recommend you carry in the cockpit sheet bags for MOB recovery. We tether it to the rear lifelines in a race now so it doesn't get lost amongst all the confusion.

I have a ski rope tied to the stern pulpit - 20mtrs long, has a large handle you can hook your arm through, and it floats, so you can toss it over without worrying about fouling the prop.
regards,
allan

Really good the see the attitude of the posters here as to good training.
Refreshing change these days.

As a side as things have turned out, the best the best training I ever did was doing a dedicated Marine Emergency First Aid course taught by ex helicopter para medics.
It was not cheap but designed just for a maritime environment.
It was 3 days from memory and not sure if it is offered anymore to civilians.

Every boat since I carry a very large roll of glad wrap!
The single most useful thing to have in your first aid kit.

I have to say all of the above is fantastic but if your sailing consists of sailing around Pittwater for the day / weekend with mum and the kids something as simple as learning how to read and understand weather
maps / forecasts would be high on my list for general safety.

Just reading through some very old sailing books I found in the Op shop stories of old leaky wooden yachts sailed great distances through incredible storms, safety gear was a spare sheet tied around your waist.
No weather reports, No GPS ,
BUT WHAT THEY DID HAVE WAS SEAMANSHIP ...
If money could buy you safety we wouldn't have a problem, let's do one more course some one is making a fortune.
Take a leaf out of Roger Taylor of simple sailor fame sailed to 80 degrees North in a engineless 21ft yacht with only a hand held GPS for electronics and very very very good seamanship , not once but 3 times .

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Bristolfashion said..
I was just reflecting that "safety" is wider than the gear on the boat. At the highest level maybe it is considering the boat, the crew & the conditions in the context of the trip planned.

The real art is the risk assessment; evaluating all of these factors in the context of the trip to maximise the prospects of a successful trip and deal with any reasonably foreseeable problems. There is no point having a magnificently well maintained & equipped vessel with a hopelessly underqualified crew or vice versa.

^^ This Bristol is oh so true.
My first offshore delivery on Fusion, I obsessively checked all the safety gear on board. Because I had my head up my arse and was thinking in the literal sense and not 'big picture', I forgot some engine spares, specifically the impeller for the water pump.
The circumstances as to why are too embarrassing to relay here, but suffice to say I found myself solo on a lee shore with no engine, an utter fail from a safety PoV.
My fault entirely, I did two things wrong.
- I didn't write down the bastard impeller as part of the inventory and tick it off. (I now have a pre-made checklist with everything on it, subdivided into Category 5/3/2 groupings)
- It was a brand new boat, so I didn't think of engine spares as a priority. That was really dumb.

If I was thinking of safety in a holistic sense, I wouldn't have missed such a rookie error. What Bristol is referring to for me is a skipper's primary job, always evaluating the risks ahead of time and thinking and adjusting accordingly. Some safety big picture headings...
- crew fatigue.
- crew capability.
- existing ailments. (I had a crew member almost die from an asthma attack once, scary)
- weather. As many models you can get your hands on.
- comms.
- passage plan and the briefing of it to the crew. Not usually thought of as a safety item, but for me it is a page 1 thingy.
- heave to. We practice heaving to in heavy and light airs. I was told my boat design won't heave to at all, it turns out it does fine. And such a handy skill to have.
- collision plan. We hit a whale in the middle of the night, and the first 5 minutes I am not proud of, it was a bit chaotic and not managed well. We got lucky, we did all the right things but that was due to crew experience, not because of a plan we all understood.

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Bananabender said..
I have to say all of the above is fantastic but if your sailing consists of sailing around Pittwater for the day / weekend with mum and the kids something as simple as learning how to read and understand weather
maps / forecasts would be high on my list for general safety.

Carrying on from ZZZZ post, a great book to read if you have kids on the boat is the Compleat Cruiser by L. Francis Herreshoff. Although written in 1956 in a narrative style it is full of traditional safety wisdom. The plot is he is sailing his self designed engineless yacht with his daughter and her friend. They have a lot of fun doing safety drills making sure all can sail the boat back around if someone falls over.

Maybe too there are many reasons for the low freeboard on his H28? One being that most will be able to get back on the boat if they fall over? Or at least hang on? Too many these days want the supposed safety of a overstated freeboard that keeps them away from that nasty water. In doing so they neglect the fact it might be near impossible to get back on in an emergency. There have been many cases of abandoned yachts found with peoples towels and clothes awaiting them in the cockpit after they return from a swim. Extending this point it is also worth thinking about if you have a basic life ring or trail a floatable?

I probably should also mentions that since getting obsessed with sailing I have read all the classic yachting litterature I could consume including the disaster stories. No better advice than the actual experiences of others?

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Zzzzzz said..

surfershaneA said..
As far as the catamaran tragedy goes it shows a prime safety equipment includes the old school barometer and barometric charts. As I have written elsewhere, according to the observed weather conditions, they sailed out of Port Stephens on what seemed like a perfect day only to be hit by a gale force front sweeping across the NSW.

It is only too easy to rely on basic weather reports that don't show the intricacies and timing you can see on the barometric charts. For example, when will that front hit, are there multiple fronts to the system, or particularly at this time of year is there a low pressure appearing off the East Coast that might intensify? While in no way directed at the skipper of the overturned cat, most have neglected to learn the art of reading weather maps.

I know a First Mate Merchant Mariner who regardless his Weather Fax Receiver invaluable both on his commercial ships and yacht. He is constantly analysing the predicted and current barometric maps. I enjoy reading his observations on a popular social media site. As I have again posted elsewhere, here is the current barometric map 10.00 the day the catamaran capsized. Their EPIRB was activated around 10.08.

Shane what is his social media site can we follow him ??

Personal friend on Facebook. He will often post weather events when he is on the merchant ships.

I'd be reading some maritime weather forcasting books. I got into reading weather maps as a kid surfing. Like something to ponder on when I should have been doing homework. Great skill to develop.

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lydia said..
As a side as things have turned out, the best the best training I ever did was doing a dedicated Marine Emergency First Aid course taught by ex helicopter para medics.
It was not cheap but designed just for a maritime environment.
It was 3 days from memory and not sure if it is offered anymore to civilians.

Every boat since I carry a very large roll of glad wrap!
The single most useful thing to have in your first aid kit.

If I may say, if you imply that it may or may not have been about three days duration out of your year, it is likely that you may well have forgotten stuff taught to you. This is about normal - we forget some stuff said by our best mates or a work counsellor. Moreso come the next day, and again the next week. A cheat-sheet may be needed inside the First-Aid kit; maybe get all crew to read it on downwind passages.

Info about how to use cling wrap in first aid is here; www.realfirstaid.co.uk/clingfilm

(Related/unrelated) Plastics conflict me, with much talk about (micro)plastics in waterways - although nobody talks of many and diverse single-use plastics in surgery and nursing... and first-aid.

Flame/heat retardant glove in with the flares. A course I was on( yes they are good) we were setting off hand held flares. When one person was letting his flare off a red hot spark dropped onto his hand. He dropped the flare. The instructor said great now your boats on fire or there is a hole in your life raft. Who wants a glove. We have a welders glove that goes half way down your forearm.

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tarquin1 said..
Flame/heat retardant glove in with the flares. A course I was on( yes they are good) we were setting off hand held flares. When one person was letting his flare off a red hot spark dropped onto his hand. He dropped the flare. The instructor said great now your boats on fire or there is a hole in your life raft. Who wants a glove. We have a welders glove that goes half way down your forearm.

Brilliant. That's going on my list, thanks tarquin.

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shaggybaxter said..

lydia said..
In higher latitudes it is always on my wrist.
Sunto Barograph.
Barely need to look at a weather chart.
Don't need the internet.
You can even set alarms on it for pressure drops or worse increases.
So between that and the observations on the radio skeds you can draw your own weather charts.

Lydia,
Please tell me that records pressure over time, preferably 48 hours odd.
Now that would be cool.
Working on the premise that it is the pressure drop over time that is of interest.

Shaggy
that is over a 24 hour period
i have never tried to set it for a longer period
never properly calibrated the temp but very careful to check calibration of pressure

But remember we all think of a pressure drop as dangerous but a pressure increase is also dangerous as it is the gradient that matters.

www.maritimenz.govt.nz/commercial/safety/accidents-reporting/accident-reports/documents/Platino-mnz-accident-report-2016.pdf

I will transfer this over from another thread. Long but skim through it. Lots of good info.
From loads on turning blocks and what went wrong and advice on what to do or how to use safety equipment