I also remember asking a fellow crew member to tie a bowline
at a challenging time at 3am, during a hurricane in the North Atlantic onboard the 80ft Fife Halloween, as we were furiously engaged in a fight to keep the mast upright. I had just climbed into a bosun’s chair and was about to be hoisted aloft to reconnect the shrouds, which had parted from our leeward spreaders when we were falling off small dark mountains, and so I needed a downhaul attached to the base of the chair to try to limit my swing. I kept asking him to do this, leaning close to his ear and repeating the plan as the horizontal rain roared in, but the noise and sheer violence of the conditions around us meant my colleague had literally seized up, and his brain just couldn’t register what I was asking him to do.
The emergency services and the military know this all too well – shock causes people to freeze, they might be able to see your mouth moving but they simple cannot comprehend what you are saying. So if there is a serious incident onboard how are you going to communicate with a crew member who is in shock? This, I think, is one part of the crisis management plan that often gets overlooked. If someone is cold or injured shock sets in very quickly. Going from a solid and steady routine, often with a bit of adrenaline accompanying the surfing downwind or blast reaching, to suddenly being confronted by masts, rudders or keels parting company affects people in different ways.
Peter Kelly, a search and rescue officer at the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, who gave the Sydney Hobart Race safety briefing, referred to this. With a roomful of America’s Cup, Volvo and Olympic sailors, he reminded us all that the issues are often not with the event itself, as the top crews have experienced all sorts of high- modulus mishaps, but it is the delivery crews returning the boats back home who often stumble. They may not know the boat particularly well, are regularly down on numbers and often have time pressures to get the boat back. Sometimes they have borrowed personal location beacons which show up someone else’s details on the screens when activated, confusing those at rescue HQ. I am sure plenty of thought on most yachts goes into recovering a crew member from over the side, but how would you actually do it, when did you last try it and, most importantly, where are the MOB buttons onboard and how long do they have to be pressed before they activate?
Forgive me for asking, but are you absolutely sure about that? For the actual recovery, somewhere like Sydney Harbour is not too complex, with a crew member often in shorts and T-shirt, but what about in northern hemisphere conditions with sodden foul-weather gear, boots and a bulky PFD. It’s not an easy one, particularly if they are injured, and the longer they stay in the water close to the hull in a swell, as occurred with the Ker 40 Showtime, the greater chance that crew member has of getting impacted… most likely with a head injury, which instantly multiplies your problems. One of the best safety briefings I ever heard was from skipper Chris Sherlock on Mike Slade’s Maxi Leopard 3. The boat was in Sydney preparing for the Hobart, and we had race crew and some guests out for the session. Chris gathered us in the cockpit as we were motoring out, pointed out the safety gear then focused on what would happen if someone did fall over the side. His key point was: do not jump over the side with them.
‘If someone goes in the water, raise the alarm but just keep pointing to the person. The permanent crew will deal with it quickly and we absolutely do not want two bodies in the water.’ Sound thinking and a strategy voiced clearly and concisely to those onboard who were new to the boat.
I have sailed with a friend here in Sydney for 20 years, and he smiles when he tells people he knows exactly what I do whenever a serious issue starts unfolding offshore; I get some hot water going on the stove. Either I do it, or I ask someone who has that far-away look in their eyes following the sound of carbon splintering out on deck.
From experience this does two things: it gives them something positive and simple to do, and if we do have to step up into a liferaft, rapidly cut the painter and then try to move the raft, with half a dozen crew smartly away from a sinking vessel using paddles the size of table tennis bats, well, at least we all have a mouthful of
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WWW.RECKMANN.COM SEAHORSE 27
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