June 2 , 2004
Safety & Comfort Offshore

This week SetSail asked all our cruising contributors to write about Safety at Sea.

Each sailing season the overwhelming majority of boats travel safely and enjoyably with no major mishaps. Nevertheless, it seems that every year a small number of painful events occur - vessels or crew members lost in heavy weather, ship collisions, or encounters with reefs. Occasionally these tragedies involve well-founded sailboats and prudent, competent crews doing everything in their power to voyage safely, but far more often a review of the situation reveals a serious shortcoming in equipment or protocol. These are the incidents we can avoid by learning from the misfortunes of others.

For example, one season we had arrived in New Zealand ahead of most of the fleet streaming south from the Pacific islands. Air rescue services received an anguished call from a woman not far offshore. The mainsail boom had struck the head of her husband as he returned from some work on the foredeck and he'd fallen overboard. This experienced, middle-aged couple had been sailing back and forth between New Zealand and the tropics for ten years, so of course the man was wearing a harness tethered securely to the boat. The tether, however, was long enough that he was submerged alongside and just behind the moving vessel. The wife got the boat stopped and pulled frantically, somehow lifting her husband to head level with the life line. He could speak to her but was unable to do much with his arms to help out. Try as she might, she could neither lift him further nor secure the tether, and eventually lost her grip. Her husband submerged and drowned. It is possible that a life sling may have saved the day by providing a rig ready and able to winch the man aboard, even if it was necessary to jump overboard and secure it for him. An inflatable harness might also have made the difference. These are two pieces of safety equipment we carry aboard.

Aside from the obvious list of safety capabilities, including a 406 MHz EPIRB, quality life raft, weather fax capability, and well-stocked ditch bag, here are some additional twists, comments, and recommendations that do not always get the emphasis they should. One of the most important electronic safety devices is in our opinion a quality radar with "Watchman" capability and guard zone equipped with a piercing, loud auxiliary alarm. Tuned properly for the conditions, this instrument pierces darkness, precipitation, and fog, and when you get a range and bearing on something solid, you can forget the digital chart complexities and all the theory, and steer away from trouble. We'd also suggest that since we're all carrying back-up, battery-operated GPS units, why not spend a little extra for one with a mini-screen and plotting capability? We have just purchased, at the recommendation of a top delivery captain, the new Garmin 276C with Bluechart, the capabilities of which are phenomenal. The last suggestion in this category might sound strange at first: a microwave oven. What's this got to do with safety? When the weather is rough and the chips are down, nothing can beat a hot, nutritious meal or a steaming cup of coffee or tea, yet creating these in conventional mode on the stove can be hazardous under these conditions. Pop the food or covered, vented cup in the microwave - just a small cheap unit with minimum wattage - shut the door, hit the button, and in seconds you'll be feeling like a new person without the hassle and risk of being burned.

Now let's talk about what is in our opinion the most fundamentally important safety equipment category, heavy weather gear. Caught in storm conditions, the last thing you want to do is get hurt, wash overboard, make fatigue-driven errors at the helm, or do anything that increases the probability of breaking-wave capsize. Your boat is your fortress out there - the last place you want to be is in your life raft. Keep in mind that the majority of sailboats abandoned in some of the more spectacular storms never did sink. The best thing you can do to protect yourself and your floating home in stormy offshore conditions is deploy either a sea anchor or a series drogue, go inside, batten down the hatches, and keep the best radar and radio watch possible while you stay dry and get some rest. These devices allow you to park in relative safety, no steering required. Not all sailboats have the structural integrity at the transom or cockpit configuration to use a series drogue, but if you do, this may be the ultimate survival storm device - orienting stern-to the seas, cushioned by the long, weighted rode of multiple cones that pull the transom up through the white water of breaking wave crests as the swell rolls under the boat. Sea anchors are large underwater parachutes deployed from the bow. These provide more resistance to the seas than series drogues, with more potential for violent snatching, and a slower drift speed, an advantage compared to the series drogue if sea room is limited. We carry both a sea anchor and a series drogue, both ready to go in case of deteriorating conditions, and the attitude that we'll deploy one or the other as early as possible in the development of the storm.

What don't we carry and why? A storm drogue that employs a lone drag device, the purpose of which is to slow the boat down and confer greater control for the actively-steering helmsman while traveling down steep wave faces. If the weather is that bad, we'll put out the maximum safety device instead, the series drogue if we are expecting a potential survival storm, possibly the sea anchor in less severe conditions or where sea room is less, and not attempt to actively steer. Our normally short-handed crew of two adults and one small child prefers the safety and more restful conditions available inside the wheelhouse. Certainly this equipment has a place, especially for racers or large, active cruising crews; it just doesn't fit our particular situation as well as the more conservative gear.

We recommend the following sources for equipment discussed in this article:

(1) For good prices and a full range of offshore electronics, check out www.boatfix.com;

(2) We are happy with our sea anchor purchased from Para-Tech Engineering, 2117 Horseshoe Trail, Silt, CO 81652 USA, phone 970-876-0558, 800-594-0011, fax 970-876-5668, email paratech@rof.net, www.seaanchor.com;

(3) We bought a kit and constructed our own series drogue, and you can get a ready-made one from the same source: Ace Sailmakers, Jordan Series Drogues, 128 Howard Street, New London, CT 06320 USA, phone 860-443-5556, email- acesails@juno.com, www.acesails.com.

You can also obtain from Ace a copy of the USCG-commissioned study of the utility of the series drogue, designed by Don Jordan in the 1980s, for dampening and moderating loads on vessels in heavy seas: Hervey, Carol L. and Donald J. Jordan, 1987. Investigation of the Use of Drogues to Improve the Safety of Sailing Yachts. U.S. Dept. of Transportation Report. No. CG-D-20-87, also available from the National Technical Information Service, Springfield, VA 22161 USA.