Talking about safety aboard yachts is akin to talking about safety in a house or in a car. We can try not to slip downstairs or we can hope not to be hit head-on by a truck, but some of our safety depends on luck and the risks that we are taking.

To go sailing, we have to be willing to take some risks. Luckily the risks today are nothing like what seafarers faced not so many years ago when sailors sometimes went missing while furling sails on the yardarms or tending topsails on J boats. On-board accidents were not rare.

Because of the scary experiences of many yachtsmen, a great number of safety precautions and devices are now standard expectations. From anti-skid deck surfaces and lifelines, to emergency locating beacons and life rafts, the list of equipment and safety measures available or recommended is enough to boggle the mind.

Many cruising sailors have gone long distances with few safety features on their yachts, relying on their wits and good luck. And some have paid a price for inadequate preparedness.

In 1965 when MAGIC DRAGON left BC for Hawaii we had no radio transmitter, no life raft or any other emergency equipment except flares and fire extinguishers. I used to say that we were not ready yet for emergencies so we'd better not have them.

Today we can spend an awful lot on safety and emergency gadgets, many of them extremely clever and possibly useful. The more complex, the more expensive of course, but also the more likely to wear and deteriorate with time. So here is where we face a difficult choice, between bleeding our wallet and accepting some risk.

It is not just a matter of taste either. Many things comes into the equation--the type of boat and the size of the crew, as well as the sort of sailing undertaken and where to. Racers take more chances. Cruisers going to high latitudes face more risk than those exploring tropical islands. On long passages, especially in remote parts of the world, we need to think about medical kits of a more serious type than while cruising along the coast of developed countries. The same goes for provisioning and carrying spare parts.

Besides falling overboard at sea, or even in port in cold water or strong current, fire and accidents aboard are the scariest things.

We have hoped that, with a very maneuverable yacht with boarding steps on the stern, one of us could pick up the other. However, we may be kidding ourselves, and the various MOB recovery accessories available today could make all the difference.

We used to carry a smoke mask to be able to find the source of an eventual fire to put it out with the extinguishers. However, the mask has perished with time and we have yet to replace it.

Over the years we've had a couple of scares.

The smoke alarm in the engine compartment woke us up one night. After quickly turning off both 12- and 24-volt battery banks, I checked the smoke filled engine space to find that the water pumps and the alternators felt cold and were intact but the fresh-water-cooled engine exhaust manifold was warm, although we had not run the engine for over a week! It turned out that a sharp hose clamp on the outside of the salt water return rubber hose had cut into an alternator hot wire and shorted through the salt-impregnated hose. This had melted the SS hose clamp and the rubber hose, melting the alternator wire's insulation and opening the salt water into the bilge...We now turn off the engine water intake when it is not needed.

On another occasion, approaching New Zealand in very rough conditions, burned wire smoke came pouring out from behind the SSB radio and from behind our gas cooker. This time it was the cook stove that had shifted in its recess in the galley counter and touched the terminal of an ammeter mounted on the side bulkhead. The radio is grounded to the keels. The cooker should not have been grounded, however its copper gas line in the bilge had got into contact with a fuel copper line from our keel tanks. The resulting short caused the melting of several feet of wire insulation and the radio power plug, hence the smoke.

These sorts of experiences give a real fright until the problem is sorted out, because when a fire starts, the possibilities are enough to give nightmares.

Accidents can make a scare list also. Burns, falls, broken bones, cuts all can happen given a chance. Cooks can be in a dangerous situation when tending a gimbaled stove swinging above them on a heeled yacht. We've positioned our stove on the galley's aft bulkhead to spare us that danger.

We never leave winch handles on the winches as they can impale the chest of a falling crew. I see that the new breed of winch cranks have a wide knobs on their tips. As well as providing a convenient palm grab for fast winch spinning, they would not act as a bayonet like our pointed ones.

Fingers and toes are vulnerable around winches and windlass, and there have been some nasty stories of crew being scalped when their long hair met with spinning sheets.

Mechanical moving parts must be watched. A friend was lucky to be within helicopter range from Pearl Harbor when a revolving shaft coupling bolt caught his shirtsleeve while he was attempting to stop the shaft gland leaking. He was flown to hospital and eventually recovered the use of his broken and chewed arm.

Avoiding collisions can be a challenge. Low-cut headsails and other visibility restrictions can be a big hazard. But even with our panoramic visibility from our cockpit pilot seats, we managed to smash into a Whangarei River marker. The current was pushing us sideways and I was standing in the middle of the cockpit, the marker stayed in the blind spot created by the windshield center post, the mast and the heater chimney until it was too close for me to miss it.

Unlit and otherwise invisible floating objects are other dangers where luck plays a part. MAGIC DRAGON has 3/4" of fiberglass at the waterline from the bow to the maximum beam over her 2" cedar planking to protect her. And we hope that with her fine entrance she might glance away from a submerged object. If she should be holed, by turning two valves we can get the engine's 1-1/4" saltwater circulation pump to suck from the bilge to assist the electric bilge pump, the sump pump and the cockpit hand pump. We hope that we could somehow stop the leak enough to keep going to safety.

For those of us who cruise where there are few docks and marinas, a seaworthy shore boat is a must. A poor dinghy can be a serious handicap, but it can also be dangerous. It is one thing to be imprisoned aboard because of bad weather, but it is another not to be able to get back aboard while returning from a shore expedition. If an efficient motorized dinghy is available to go ashore, the yacht can often be anchored in a more pleasant and sheltered haven.

We rented a big life raft when we sailed from Saipan to Agrigan in the Northern Marianas, because we took five other people with us for that treasure hunt. But when just the two of us sail or when we are accompanied by a friend or two, we content ourselves with our 14' outboard-powered planing shore boat. It is also an unsinkable rightable sailing-rowing lifeboat. Not easy to launch from a yacht in distress, but our Dragon was designed to stay afloat with the deck awash and we hope we would be able to do the transfer.

Inflatable life rafts have their place, but they are expensive and have a limited life. Many people have discovered while testing theirs that the inflatable unit had deteriorated in the canisters to the point of being useless. When Patrick and Wendy Van God were sunk by a whale off the coast of Brazil on their way back to France after a spell in Antarctica, they took to their sailing inflatable and managed to sail back 250 miles toward the coast of Brazil where fishermen rescued them. They were quite sure that adrift in a life raft they would have perished in the deserted South Atlantic.

We have cruised for fun, trying to follow the good seasons, and we have not attempted to be heroes. We don't mind reefing early or setting the wind vane to steer us downwind while working on deck. So although we've carried safety harnesses and life vests, we have seldom donned them because we find them cumbersome. But our experience aboard MAGIC DRAGON may not give us a valid judgment as far as what we would have to do on another type of yacht. With her low ballast ratio and large twin fins keels, MAGIC DRAGON has a gentle motion, and her unencumbered flush deck with sturdy lifelines is easy to come and go on. Her enclosed convertible cockpit is a safe place to be in most conditions. To cling to a more active and encumbered deck one may well need harnesses and fore-and-aft safety straps to tie onto.

Fortunately, dependable roller reefing and furling sails have reduced the need for antics on deck in bad weather. And with GPS, we are spared the challenge of taking sights with a sextant. We even seldom wear wet weather gear because we can do a lot of the sail handling and course changes from the shelter of our cockpit.

We depend on the same kitchen timer that wakes us on our night watches to remind us of radio schedules and other things. We have come to using clothes pegs as reminders for some important duties like turning off the saltwater intakes, the propane gas, the feathered propeller etc. When we forget what the clothes pegs are for, we'll try to remember to start worrying.

We can't pretend that we've been clever at keeping safe for the past 40 years. But we are glad that we have not had such bad luck as to get us into real trouble.