MOB Experience/Frequency

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

yeah, but I didn't really ask about deaths, that's been thread drift even I was part of it

BTW - I wouldn't consider 25% in day light and 50% at night as "Alcohol involved in relatively few"

Fine, but that leaves, what, 100 MOB deaths without alcohol involved? 100 DEATHS. That's a lot.



I'm not saying you're saying this, but to be clear, you can't say "Oh, some people get drunk and fall off their boats and drown. I don't drink on board [?] so I don't need to worry about MOB; it's not a serious risk."

[sailorboy1]

All I asked was who had a major MOB

I’m not doing the reply battle anymore

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by stevensuf

Ais personal distress beacons make a lot of sense

Yes, but you have to wear them, we rarely do, almost never in fact because they are attached to that annoying PFD.
However we never, ever sail in bad weather if we can avoid it, and are getting so that we do less sailing at night.

The way my cockpit is, I’d say it’s nearly impossible to fall overboard, leaving of course those times you on deck being the most likely times.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

All I asked was who had a major MOB
. . .

OK. Fair enough.



I don't talk about this much.



One of my best friends fell overboard and drowned when I was first learning to sail. It was a long time ago but I'll never forget it. I still have nightmares about it.



Not on my boat, but I was not far away. He slipped out of his trapeze in lively weather. 3 boats were trying to find him for the whole afternoon. We couldn't see anything because of the sea state -- he disappeared in seconds. He should have been right there -- but we couldn't see him. We looked and looked but we couldn't find him. We finally spotted the back of his neck floating just above the surface, just about sundown. He was dead.

[model 10]

I think a minor MOB will turn into a major MOB when you see how your lovely cruiser wife can't sail for ****.

[gamayun]

Originally Posted by Ecos

I think a minor MOB will turn into a major MOB when you see how your lovely cruiser wife can't sail for ****.

First, make sure she wasn't trying to run you down during those MOB drills. Best solution for this is to give her the helm more frequently and build confidence in her capabilities by not critiquing her every move or making all the decisions for her.

Me, I've gone overboard twice. Once on a powerboat and once under sail in high winds. Both times happened in a fraction of a blink that I didn't see coming until the moment when I realized there was no turning back.

More recently, I jumped into SF Bay and had a trimaran practice their MOB drill on me. More people should do this. We learned a lot.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by Ecos

I think a minor MOB will turn into a major MOB when you see how your lovely cruiser wife can't sail for ****.

And now at least 51% of the world hates you

[belizesailor]

Ive taught plenty of MOB drills, but never had a real MOB from a boat Ive been aboard (flipped beach cats etc, but all good fun, no emergencies)...never gone MOB myself either.

I am in the habit of wearing a type V when teaching though...imagine going MOB on the first day of sailing class...before they've even done an MOB drill! [emoji33]

I have been involved in a few body recoveries from drowning, sobering stuff.

[fxykty]

I have experienced two real-life MOBs, both in the early 90s. #LongPostComing, sorry.

For offshore, the MOB I experienced was during a delivery of a Farr 1104 (11m/36 foot IOR cruiser/racer) from Sydney to Noumea. There were 4 of us onboard, with the other three all water sports instructors at the Noumea Club Med and regular race crew of the boat, and me a young Canuck boat-bumming around the South Pacific. We sailed 2-up on a 3 hour rotation hand steering 24 hours a day as this boat was set up as racer.

On our second night we were 300 miles NE from Sydney under double reefed delivery main and blade jib, close reaching in around 20 knots, with seas 3-4m and frequent white caps - basically fresh trade wind conditions. The night was dark, with no moon and broken clouds. Boat speed was 7-8 knots and fairly rough movement on board - wine glasses from the evening before were rattling in the sink.

Around 2 in the morning we got woken up by the call “Manu is in the water”. The boat was knocked down to about 70 degrees and I slashed my feet on the broken wine glasses. My first thought as I got up was “that’s it, he’s gone”.

By the time we two off-watchers got into the cockpit the remaining on-watch guy had blown both sheets and halyards and both sails were in the water and we were drifting sideways. He told us that Manu had been steering and a wave had broken over the boat, knocked us over, and he got washed out. The boat came back up and started racing ahead. He threw the MOB pole and horseshoe buoy (connected to each other) shortly after the MOB and took over steering, yelled to us, and fast stopped the boat, knocking us over again, then blew the lines. It took us about 10 minutes to gather in the sails and get all the lines out of the water. The main was ripped in half, sigh.

We were likely around 2 miles away from the position of the MOB. We got the engine on and reversed our course, following our wake and reversed heading from the GPS. We didn’t allow for drift.

Two of us were watching to each side. After 20 minutes or so we spotted an intermittent, very weak flash a few swells to windward. If the night had been brighter we would not have seen it at that distance. You wouldn’t believe the absolute flood of relief that we had found him.

We altered course and as we got closer we could see that he was holding a torch in one of his hands. We circled him, then drifted down to him stern quarter first. He was still able to swim, so we put a person on the rear counter to grab him and called him to swim in. We got real close and despite the waves grabbed him by hand, then all of us dragged him by brute force over the rear counter into the cockpit. He was very tired and the rest of us were blown on adrenaline so we turned off the engine and all slept the rest of the night. We never found the MOB pole or horseshoe buoy (didn’t keep looking after finding Manu).

We weren’t wearing pfds nor harnesses. It was pure luck that he had a torch in his pocket - he’d been using it to trim the sails before getting back on the helm and hadn’t passed the torch to the other crew who had come off the helm. If not for the torch we would not have seen him - there’s too much noise and wave to see anything more than 20-30m away. He was also lucky that he was an experienced open water swimmer. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts when we pulled him out - he had got rid of his wet weather jacket as it wasn’t helping him swim to stay afloat.

***************

For near shore, the MOB was our bowman off a fully crewed (12) IOR 43 foot two ton racing boat. We were steaming downwind under a storm spinnaker and full main in 30 knots of wind. IOR boat, so pretty twitchy. We had fully dropped our blade jib (a mistake in those conditions) and it washed over the side as we plowed through a wave. Our bowman heroically tried to hold onto the sail (still held at the tack and the sheets) and went into the water with it.

This was just off the Sydney Heads in summer, so 22 degree C water - not too bad. She (the bowman) was wearing shorts, a climbing harness, and a polo shirt, wasn’t tethered and wasn’t wearing a pfd. None of us did for inshore racing.

Once we noticed she was gone with the sail, the helmsman turned the boat 90 degrees and laid her over for a crash gybe quick stop (the jib trailing in the water helped turn the boat). Fortunately she didn’t hold onto the job as that might of pulled her under.

We blew the spin halyard and gathered it in with the boat at 80 degrees, and kept the main pinned against the running backstay to keep the boat over and stopped. However, we were still drifting about 2 knots to leeward and within the 2-3 minutes it took us to retrieve the spinnaker, release the backstay and the main so we could drop it, drop the main, clear the lines and start the engine we were about 500m to leeward of our bowman. She was picked up by a safety RHIB, who were alerted by our tactician’s radio call, long before we got anywhere near her and the MOB position on our GPS. We lost sight of her pretty quickly after the crash gybe.

Separation happens really fast, and our bowman said the freakiest thing was watching the boat sail away, then crash gybe and get knockdowned, and still moving downwind and away quite fast. Due to the swells she lost sight of us and was afraid of getting run down by all the one tonners (40 foot) behind us.

Bottom line in both cases, don’t fall in. If you do, be tethered. If not tethered, have a signalling device, preferably electronic (AIS). Finding he person is half the battle; retrieving them back on board is the other half. With full crews, no problem. With a cruising couple, good luck with the second half.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by gamayun

. . . More recently, I jumped into SF Bay and had a trimaran practice their MOB drill on me. More people should do this. We learned a lot.

I've posted this before, but I think this is absolutely right, and important.


I don't understand why people practice FINDING an MOB, but don't practice getting him aboard again.



Getting a casualty on board again is a significant and completely different challenge, from finding him. People die on a regular basis while crews fumble around with this.


Last summer I had my entire crew jump into the icy water, one after the other, while we took turns hauling them out. Damned right we learned a lot. It's a lot harder than it looks, and you don't want to be just figuring it out, or improvising, while your casualty is in the process of drowning or succumbing to hypothermia.

[Dockhead]

This is the MAIB report on the Sarah Young MOB death:


https://assets.publishing.service.go...ort07_2017.pdf


It is sobering and instructive. A well-crewed and well-prepared boat, found it difficult enough to find and recover a crew overboard, that they were unable to save her life. I guess 99% of us are LESS well prepared and LESS well crewed than this boat was.


The OP asks -- how common is this and should we really worry about it so much? MOB in my view is the main risk to life in our sport, which kills sailors far too often -- nearly all of these cases could have been prevented. Something to worry about more, not less, in my opinion. Or rather, not to worry, but study and practice.

[cal40john]

A collection of Man Overboard stories -

https://www.ussailing.org/wp-content...se-History.pdf

[Dockhead]

How easy it can be to go over:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xmx-yS8ESI

[Ungvar]

Yes I have. They don't happen until they happen, then it's a life and death situation.

Saying you have been sailing for 10 years but never had an off shore MOB is no different than saying you have been driving for 10 years (which most people accomish by 26) but have never been involved in a deadly crash on the highway.

[Pete7]

Friend fell overboard from a large diesel rib travelling at speed in the Solent in poor weather conditions. Getting him back on board wasn't a problem being a rib. However, he was in shock straight away as the water temperature was 5'c. He also faced a 40 minute ride in an open boat in February to get back home.

Being a coded boat there were space blankets on board which helped as did sitting down on the floor behind the console out of the wind. However, it was food for thought and something that hadn't previously been a problem with divers as we all wore full drysuits with insulation underneath.

Pete