1985 (6) - Man-Overboard Drill

Alcohol Ink Paintings on Yupo Paper.

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

While in Almerimar, we met John and Trisha, from British Columbia, who were living on their sailboat, Satellite.  The day after we met them, friends of theirs, Lydia and Dennis, arrived from Canada to do some sailing on Satellite.  The six of us got into an interesting discussion on one of the hazards of boating - falling overboard.  Trisha had an almost pathological fear that if John were to fall overboard, she wouldn't be able to get him back on the boat.  Her fear had grown to such proportions that she wouldn't do even a day sail if she and John were alone.

John and Trish had recently invested in an interesting harness contraption, which would be thrown overboard if someone fell into the sea.  The harness was at the end of a long rope.  The theory was that you would use your boat to circle the person in the water until they were able to reach the floating harness.  Then there was a pulley system, attached to a winch, so the person could be winched back on board.  I didn't think it would serve any purpose to point out that this method presupposed that the person in the water was still conscious, and capable of getting into the harness.  Or to mention our belief that the most likely time for one of us to fall overboard was when the other person was off watch, and asleep below, so there wouldn't be anyone on deck to throw the harness over in the first place.

John and Trish had raised four children, and had always been involved in boating.  Trish told me they had done man-overboard drills with the children.  Proving that I'd never been a mother, I foolishly asked, "Did you throw one of the kids over?"  That gave Trish a moment's pause, but she recovered quickly and said that, no, they had used a boat cushion.  Dennis and Lydia had taken sailing classes at their local yacht club, including practice in rescuing inanimate objects.  They were surprised to hear that in all our years of cruising, we had never done a man-overboard drill.  Quite frankly, who wants to risk losing a boat cushion?