...the earlier event was our first POB experience. Coming into dock, I had come off and had secured foreline (too tightly it turned out) and as Barbara was stepping off, the tension in the forward dock line pulled the stern back off the dock and into the water went Mom. She first got stuck on the aft starboard stanchion, hanging half in the water, getting a nasty bruises from falling around the backstay/transom area. I was pretty upset as she was in prime position to get smushed between Catigale and dock if a wake came. After a minute, we calmed down enough to drop into the water and paddle to the swim ladder, and climbed out. She suffered a lot of bruising around arms, and a badly sprained knee but is recovering with my waiting on her hand and foot (on the boat of course
). I was amazed at the amount of emotion that was generated, and we decided we would supplement our theoretical POB drills with real drill.Back on the water Yesterday. 75 degree water at high tide. We slipped out to a beach, had 1 foot waves peaking at 2 when a wake came by.
I dropped Fortress, 25 feet of Chain, 150 feet of rode in 10 feet of water - I didnt want the boat to be going anywhere.
Another river anchor off the stern to keep swinging down.
We are now hooked in about 200 feet from shore (out of channel of course) in 10 feet of water.
We practiced with kids
- Swimming in lifevests to shore
- Approaching pitching boat, avoiding motor
- Deploying Lifesling 2, swimming to it, putting it on, towing back to boat, guiding them to swim ladder, and climbing back on.
- We tried putting the lifesling on the topping lift and helping a tired swimmer up the ladder using the genny cars and winch. This is useful as this can be done from transom by one person in a pinch.
We will be adding a sailing upwind and downwind drill recovering a overboard cushion to round this out. When the kids are older (or if we are three adults up) we will do a live recovery drill too.
We wil be adding this to our Annual Sailing Agenda.
Take Home Messages
If you dont have a swim ladder I dont know how you can get back onto a 26X after falling off. Im fairly athletic and in a wake chop of 2 feet I found it hard to mount the ladder and get back on board. It wasnt easy in even one foot waves.
The kids fought going down the ladder the first time, so we were really happy we go them used to being in the water in lifejackets, and seeing the boat from the water. The lifesling "ride" getting pulled back to boat was the best part and put big smiles on their faces...remember that with kids to make it enjoyable (Caitlin wants to take the ride again this morning)
The biggest surpise to me was the strength of the emotions and how it slowed the action speed to a crawl. I think we are much better equipped mentally to deal with a POB having done this drill and gotten the gear out the bags and USED it.
Happy Sailings all!!
