Have You Ever Been a Person Overboard ?

[MarcHall]

Yup.

Back in the when in the early 80s I chartered a boat out of Vancouver to take a group of divers over to the Gulf Islands. The inflatable they used was normally batten down on the deck of the boat for the passage but the weather was beautiful and the crew (1 captain and 1 crew - who was a brother of the captain and apparently had little on the water experince) untied the inflatable in preparation for the days diving.

Wind came up and blew the inflatable overboard, ocean surface was quite choppy now and the crew was unable to get a line on the inflatable. One of my group volunteered to put his wetsuit on, jump into the inflatable and tie a line to it. Since I was running the charter I felt compled to take his place. So I put on the farmer john pants of my wetsuits, jumped into the inflatable and tied a line to it. For some reason, probably to keep the bow of the boat into the wind the boat was motoring toward the Gulf islands. The waves were pretty sizable at this point as the wind had continued to build. The crew pulled the inflatable up to the stern of the boat and being of a classic design as a wave when buy I was in danger of becoming a sandwich between the hull of the boat coming down and the inflatable ---- so I bailed off the boat and watch the boat motoring away from me as I floated amongst the white caps. The captain in the wheelhouse and no vision toward the stern of the boat so it took awhile before he was notified and the boat began to turn around.

I believe that the only thing that saved me from a long period in the water was that the individual who had originally volunteered to jump into the inflatable was an active boater in the Puget Sound and knew to keep his eyes on me until the boat the was able to pick me up.

It was interesting being in the channel with the boat at least a hundred yards away and still motoring away from me.

Marc Hall
Crazy Fish, a Crealock 37 currently sitting in a marina in San Diego