Accidents, death and sailing culture

[Chuck Hawley]

By way of introduction, I served as the Chairman of the Safety at Sea Committee at US Sailing from 2011 to 2017. During that time, there were several dramatic sailing incidents that US Sailing was asked to investigate. With one exception, no one was a professional accident investigator, but all were experienced sailors and we did our best to get at the root causes of the accidents without pointing the finger at individuals.

In addition, several Safety at Sea Committee members served on non-US Sailing sailing incident investigative teams, including the grounding of Vestas Wind and the capsize of Rambler 100 during the Fastnet.

These reports (and some other reports and safety-related topics) are on the US Sailing website, and you're welcome to download them.

About 24 sailors die in recreational sailing accidents in a given year, which amounts to about 3.5% of the total recreational boating deaths. Many of those are very "ordinary" (and I don't mean to reduce the tragedy, but they occur on inland waters, small boats) while a few are related to offshore racing, big boats, etc.

Cheers,

Chuck Hawley
Past Chairman, Safety at Sea Committee, US Sailing

[belizesailor]

Hang on...nobody picks apart an accident on CF!??? Look at some of the accident threads....its like a flock of very hungry vultures! They start feasting while while the carcas is still warm!

Geez, the bones have often been picked clean before the rescue is even done. If there was not enough meat on the bones to pick then posters flesh it out with their own conjectures of the facts! 😆

[Pelagic]

Interesting stats Chuck.
I am guessing that small day boats, inland water casualties also implies a fair amount of alcohol related influences.

Offshore sailors tend to be more sober.

[rmesfo]

Originally Posted by Jammer

A couple of years ago I became involved in scuba diving. The scuba forums pick apart every accident, every fatality, in painstaking detail. Sometimes it seems like there are more accidents picked apart in the forums than the statistics would show occur in any given year. As a whole, I think it's a healthy habit. The community learns. Individuals learn. Diving becomes safer. Eventually, 50 posts into any given accident thread, discussion devolves into "it couldn't happen to me because..."

The sailing culture couldn't be more different. It seems to me that sailors turn a blind eye to the reaper. It's not as though sailing is any less dangerous. The water is just as unforgiving whether things go to hell at the surface or at depth. I don't understand it. Nobody picks apart the accidents. Nobody excogitates upon how they could be prevented, or what particular piece of gear, or training, or procedure would have changed the outcome.

Maybe it's the fact that people have been sailing for millennia while SCUBA dates only to 1943. But air-supplied diving is much older, with some authorities stating that diving bells were used in the 4th century B.C. Maybe it has to do with the way diving has been commercialized.

But I still don't quite get it.

It is like flying, professional or recreational. Over 80 per cent of the accidents are pilot error or the mechanical malfunction was too much for the pilot's ability to handle. Add a few whiskey's and the odd go up.

[Lihuedooley77]

Flying nut

Agree, flying absolutely has made my world, WHAT IF's, and thinking ahead and having situational awareness, on a daily basis, and that includes sailing, flying, driving, etc. I am sure you do the same.

In flying, about 40 years began in 1967 and retired from air combat instructing in 2005, most of it professionally.

Flying , I have had electrical, or mechanical failures, but stayed cool and followed procedures. Never declared an emergency although do advise ATC of my situation . Never had to make an off airport landing, always got it on the ground with all the big pieces, at an airport.

I actually transferred my years of flying and the idea of instruction that I went thru for all of my ratings, into sailing , by joining a sailing club and getting lessons from professionals. I did both as careers , concurrently, and it has been a fabulous life.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by Jammer

But I still don't quite get it.

I think you don't get it because your assumptions are all wrong!
Serious Marine casualties are analyzed in detail and international organizations like IMO and SOLAS meet regularly to make new regulations base on those events.

All of that trickles down to the amateur sailor, many who just ignore and piddle away in their blissful ignorance.

Its the same with the average sport diver who could care less about what is reviewed on Forums.

Those that care, pay close attention and learn from tragic events.

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by belizesailor

Hang on...nobody picks apart an accident on CF!??? Look at some of the accident threads....its like a flock of very hungry vultures! They start feasting while while the carcas is still warm!

Geez, the bones have often been picked clean before the rescue is even done. If there was not enough meat on the bones to pick then posters flesh it out with their own conjectures of the facts! 😆

That was my first reaction. And if the accident involves a multihull, it won't even matter that nobody was hurt, the thread will still run for months.

[AKA-None]

I think the small list of instructions called the COLREGS would lead you to believe that boating accidents get some in depth analysis. What's the diving equivalent?
I personally would equate swimming to day boating/sailing rather than attempt to say that all diving is equivalent to all sailing.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

That was my first reaction. And if the accident involves a multihull, it won't even matter that nobody was hurt, the thread will still run for months.

Aww!, and I thought that was reserved for the US Navy and their arrogant smokescreen of the facts [emoji6]

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by Chuck Hawley

By way of introduction, I served as the Chairman of the Safety at Sea Committee at US Sailing from 2011 to 2017. During that time, there were several dramatic sailing incidents that US Sailing was asked to investigate. With one exception, no one was a professional accident investigator, but all were experienced sailors and we did our best to get at the root causes of the accidents without pointing the finger at individuals.



In addition, several Safety at Sea Committee members served on non-US Sailing sailing incident investigative teams, including the grounding of Vestas Wind and the capsize of Rambler 100 during the Fastnet.



These reports (and some other reports and safety-related topics) are on the US Sailing website, and you're welcome to download them.



About 24 sailors die in recreational sailing accidents in a given year, which amounts to about 3.5% of the total recreational boating deaths. Many of those are very "ordinary" (and I don't mean to reduce the tragedy, but they occur on inland waters, small boats) while a few are related to offshore racing, big boats, etc.



Cheers,



Chuck Hawley

Past Chairman, Safety at Sea Committee, US Sailing

Since sailing accidents are almost always caused by individuals doing something careless or stupid, or neglecting to do something that needed doing, how could you possibly hope to accurately analyze what went wrong without pointing fingers at those individuals and the mistakes they made? Do you mean that you just didn’t use the individuals names or did you actually not identify who did what wrong which led to the accident?

[clownfishsydney]

As a scuba diver with a little bit of experience (4,045 dives as of today), and a sailor of about 35 years, with 2 x 6 months full time sailing in the past 2.5 years, I think there are a lot of similarities with accidents in both areas.

Many divers die because they overestimate their ability and underestimate the environmental conditions (eg current, wave action, depth) and are soon overwhelmed so much that they panic, run out of air or go very low and then drown.

I have also seen many cases of sailors heading out in predicted very bad conditions and running into such bad weather that they end up in big trouble. I personally have seen many people going out in unsuitable boats for the weather or proposed voyage (eg no sails, one old undermaintained engine, huge bad weather change predicted). Some of these boats have made it, some have not.

Just over a week ago, a boat left Sydney for a non-stop trip to the Gold Coast, it took them 33 hours to make their first (unattended) landfall, less than one fifth of the way. Already they had one engine out of action, a non-functional radio and a mobile phone that seemed to be incapable of being used the short distance to shore. The next day they left this port with still only one engine. The next day they had to be towed into another port with no engines, no power, no chartplotter and only a small headsail. This boat is an accident in the making. They were lucky that the wind and seas did not get very bad and that there was a volunteer rescue boat able to save them. Without this they would probably have hit the rocks near where they were rescued and possibly died.

Which is more dangerous? I think sailing so long as when diving, you do not push the envelope and maintain all your gear properly and dive within your training and level of experience. This is because there is far more involved that is outside my ability to control (uncharted reefs, weather changes that are unpredicted, dangerous gear failures). In diving, gear failures are generally made to fail "safely" (eg regulators are made so that if they fail, they continue to give you air, albeit a huge amount and you will soon run out). We also have redundant air sources if going deeper than you can safely ascend with a failing regulator.

[dwedeking2]

Nothing says InterWebz better than a thread over-analyzing the relationship between over-analyzing scuba threads and over-analyzing sailing threads with people saying they over-analyze better than you cause they over-analyze flying...

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by dwedeking2

Nothing says InterWebz better than a thread over-analyzing the relationship between over-analyzing scuba threads and over-analyzing sailing threads with people saying they over-analyze better than you cause they over-analyze flying...

Killjoy!

[Paul Elliott]

It seems to me that much of the internet after-incident analysis is where we publicly explain to ourselves why "that would never happen to me, because I am so smart / have a better boat / have more experience / am better-looking / etc." I think it's human nature. But even this superficial level of review can be genuinely useful.

I am certainly not disparaging the efforts of the Safety at Sea committee that Chuck mentioned above. I followed their work after the April 2012 "Low Speed Chase" incident offshore of San Francisco, and much good came out of that tragedy. One of the survivors came to a Safety at Sea training seminar and spoke about what happened, what worked and what didn't. The local racing rules were amended based on a study of the reefs, shoals, and seas around the Farallon Islands. This was a serious analysis.

[danielamartindm]

Diving is one specific act that takes place over a small window of time in a given location. Sailing accidents, with the complexities of changing weather, vessel design, locale, equipment, operator skill and experience, collision, rules of the road, regulations, etc. would seem to have more in common with aviation accidents than diving ones.