Don White wrote:
Gary wrote:

Dave wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 18:35:40 -0000, in rec.boats.cruising you wrote:


A quick exit from cold water is the most important criterion. The
colder, the quicker the exit must be. For most marina and harbour
dunks, stern boarding is safe, and they're the most common events.
As many people have discovered, it's very difficult to board a hard
dinghy from the water.




I always carry a rope ladder with plastic rungs stored in a canvas
bag with
the ladder fastened to the pushpit and a poly pull rope trailing with
about
6' in the water from the stern. If push comes to shove I can pull on the
rope and get the ladder down for boarding. I also always wear a
harness when
going forward. My one concern (other than being knocked unconscious)
is that
if I go in the drink the harness could keep me so far forward that I
wouldn't be able to reach the pull rope.

My wife boat me one of those rope ladders with plastic rungs last year
because she was worried about me getting into the boat if I fell off.
I jumped over and tried it and it was extremely difficult to climb
when the boat was anchored and stable and I was just wearing a bathing
suit. We regard the ladder as junk. We are still trying to figure
out a better way. We do have a proper boarding ladder that extends a
couple feet into the water but it is heavy and sits in a locker when
we are sailing. I would like one of those custom jobs that flips down
from the pushpit ad drops deep into the water and doesn't push away
when you step on it. I am even thinking of having a step put in the
trailing edge of the rudder to facilitate reboarding.

Gaz


Something like this?
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v252/whited/Hpim0200.jpg

Larry wrote:

Take out your usual crew of people, some partially sailors, some not, don't
do anything special or try to add qualified members to your little
assemblage.

Take her out in the harbor to a big open area with few boats you might
endanger.

Jump overboard from your lofty helm perch and start frantically screaming
and waving your arms in distress. Click the stopwatch on your diver's
Rolex Oyster to time this event.

I fell overboard last summer. We had 15 people aboard for a daysail
(it's a 40' catamaran so deck space is not a problem).

We were towing the dinghy and one oar had been left in an oarlock that
was dragging in the water. I pulled the dinghy alongside as my wife
was steering the big boat, motoring at about 6 knots. I hopped in the
dinghy, one hand holding onto the big boat, one reaching down for the
oar.

The dinghy sheered off at the bow, tilting me too far over, and I was
in the water, head first. The dinghy immediately took off astern. As
I looked up from underwater heading for the surface, I saw the dinghy
coming above me. I reached up, grabbed one of the handles on the
side, and flipped myself in. I then *carefully* pulled myself up to
the big boat by pulling on the painter and climbed aboard.

Nobody had noticed that I had fallen in, though it only took about 15
seconds from the splash, to my reappearance on the aft deck. Somebody
noticed I was dripping wet and asked when I had gone swimming. If I
hadn't caught the dinghy, I had planned to be yelling very loudly when
I surfaced!

However I have every confidence that my wife would have recovered me
in under 5 minutes in just about every condition. But we've sailed a
long way together.

Evan Gatehouse

Don White wrote:
e able to reach the pull rope.

My wife boat me one of those rope ladders with plastic rungs last year
because she was worried about me getting into the boat if I fell off.
I jumped over and tried it and it was extremely difficult to climb
when the boat was anchored and stable and I was just wearing a bathing
suit. We regard the ladder as junk. We are still trying to figure
out a better way. We do have a proper boarding ladder that extends a
couple feet into the water but it is heavy and sits in a locker when
we are sailing. I would like one of those custom jobs that flips down
from the pushpit ad drops deep into the water and doesn't push away
when you step on it. I am even thinking of having a step put in the
trailing edge of the rudder to facilitate reboarding.

Gaz


Something like this?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...d/Hpim0200.jpg
Similar but longer, more robust and not mounted through holes in the
hull. That is the right idea.

My comment was in reply to another thread about the stability of multihulls,
where
several people said monohulls will quickly fill with water and sink when
knocked
down or capsized. Just trying to make a point that this does not happen in
most
cases. I am actually trying to defend monohulls by pointing out that this
boat survived the knockdown, but unfortunately the man fell overboard.

Larry wrote:

sherwindu wrote in
:

Yes, it's another one of those monohulls going down to the bottom with
their heavy keels.

Sherwin D.



Er, ah, take off the catamaran glasses and read the article, again. The
boat SELF RIGHTED after they fell overboard....as the bilge pumps cleaned
out the mess above that heavy ol' keel.

Of course, he could have been upside down in a cat, gasping for air I
suppose.

He died of hypothermia, not monohullitis. If he'd not been thrown
overboard, he would have been below putting on dry clothes.

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006 23:25:26 -0500, Larry wrote:



Look up and down your dock. How many wives and teenagers are qualified
sailors and helmsmen on all those other dock condos on your particular
dock. How many wives have NEVER handled the boat by themselves?

See why it took so long?

April 29 we launch. By May 5 I want to have the mast in and the wife
backing the boat out and me just taking notes. We plan on living
aboard in a very few years and we need to close the gap between her
decent but scattered experience and my more methodical approach.

R.

On Mon, 30 Jan 2006 19:19:52 GMT, Don White
wrote:



Once we had our top regional boss and his wife out sailing on the Boat I
crewed on. A gust of wind snatched his cap and dropped it in the drink.
Our helmsman did a quick 180 and I immediately dove for the storage area
under the cockpit seats...scattering the ladies. I was able to get the
boat hook ready just as we passed by the cap and with one swoop I picked
it up. Timing was perfect...more by luck than any skill.

I keep a fixed boat hook lashed to the backstay for this purpose. I've
never had to wield it in earnest, but I have scooped some interesting
items from the water as I've passed with it.

R.

"Larry" wrote in message
...
Gary wrote in
news:5UxDf.375770$2k.201451
@pd7tw1no:


Of course, all these cures assume, wrongly, that the person in
the water
is:
A) Awake and alert
B) Able to pull himself up and climb a ladder
c) Not hypothermic, which easily negates A) and B)

Not wrongly, Larry. The most common situation is awake and active,
so this is what you should design for.

If you design and train to meet this case, then by all means move
on to train and equip for the more rare combinations. You'll note
that the permanent ladder solution (which can be pulled down from
the sea) meets the hypothermia case by speeding recovery. Lacking
A and B will always require competent crew on board.

The following story may have some detail slightly astray, but it
stems from a time I was living in Salcombe and there was a
lifeboat shout - a couple of decades ago.

A very experienced long distance yachtsman (Mr James) went
overboard in the Salcombe Estuary, UK, in winter. He had an
experienced crew aboard. They were on a catamaran. They rapidly
stopped and returned to him. He was perfectly fit, and talking and
joking with his crew as they tried to help him aboard. Their first
quick couple of attempts to get a line around him and hoist him
aboard failed (difficulty in heaving his weight up 5ft with raw
muscle power, I think, but memory is a little faint here). They
started rigging a hoist system, but by the time they had that
ready, he could no longer pass the loop around his body
(hypothermia). A second crw member jumped in to pass the loop
over. James was recovered, but too late. The second crew member
was recovered with difficulty by what was then a very exhausted
crew. He was hypothermic, but recovered.

I know one case doesn't prove a generality, but I guess that's why
I'm keen on sea accessible ladders.

And personally, I haven't found a rope ladder that meets the case.
They've been fitted to some liferafts - but they swing under,
making them impossible to use as ladders. However you can develop
techniques to use them (floating horizontally, putting a foot into
a step, then giving a great horizontal shove) but that requires
rehearsal, and it's not a technique if the freeboard is greater
than a couple of feet.

JimB

"News f2s" wrote in news:drngvt$f79$1
@news.freedom2surf.net:

They
started rigging a hoist system,

There's another screwup I've seen in the harbor retrieving someone. They
always try to hoist the guy by hand....when not 3 ft away is the end of a
halyard that leads down to a two-speed winch big enough to lift half the
boat....80% up the mast.

While Lionheart is coming about to retrieve, I'm mast furling the mizzen,
then fixing one of the mizzen halyards to the outhaul with a block off
the end of the boom secured by a line I can release from the mast, which
makes a great sea painter for the dingy, by the way. The boom is tied
out by a preventer to the solid handrail, either side.

To this halyard, the life ring is attached to throw to the victim, as we
passes slowly by him/her. Now hanging onto the life ring (or hopefully
tethered to it by their Sospenders, the victim is simply wound close
aboard to the mizzen "sea painter", the line released from the block and
the victim hauled up the side of the boat by the halyard and one of the
many winches in the cockpit at the base of her mizzen.

Once the victim has clipped the halyard clip to the Sospenders, the
victim no longer needs to be strong enough to haul themselves anywhere.
Crew aboard does the hauling. If the victim appears unable to do that, a
crewmember can be deployed on the halyard, jump off the mizzen boom and
swim it to the victim, maybe with a harness if necessary and it only
takes one crew member to haul BOTH of them back aboard with the winch's
power.

This grappling over the side to grab someone by hand is crazy in a
sailboat full of winches and halyards.

Evan Gatehouse wrote in news:43dee54d$1_2
@news.cybersurf.net:

I had planned to be yelling very loudly when
I surfaced!


There's another thing I like to see tied off to the Sospenders....one of
those tiny little freon airhorns that are about the same size as the little
strobe light on it. Coughing and choking for air, it's really hard to
"yell loudly". Blow that little airhorn and everyone aboard is trying to
see what boat is running into them, looking around towards where you are
frantically waving your arms.

I think I've seen them in WalMart's boat department or bicycle department
for under $5. Shhhh....don't tell the Coasties that's where mine came
from, ok?

In article ,
Larry wrote:
"News f2s" wrote in news:drngvt$f79$1
:

They
started rigging a hoist system,

There's another screwup I've seen in the harbor retrieving someone. They
always try to hoist the guy by hand....when not 3 ft away is the end of a
halyard that leads down to a two-speed winch big enough to lift half the
boat....80% up the mast.

I've seen this happen in practice... not for real. I did have a
student boat do a drop and grab on someone... not for practice. She
fell off the J-24 near the shrouds, and a big guy grabbed her as she
went by. It was a matter of seconds, and he was in the right spot at
the right time with the right upper-body strength. :-)


--
Capt. JG @@
www.sailnow.com