Accidents, death and sailing culture

[Boston Blackie]

We attended an excellent briefing last evening by the Boston Station of the Cruising Club of America on new developments in training and preparedness for Safety at Sea. This is a very active group devoted to just this topic:
https://cruisingclub.org/safety-sea

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Jammer

For SCUBA, the best statistics show that there are roughly 120 fatalities worldwide per year. Typically about 40 of these are in the United States. Since the statistics are compiled from the news and voluntary reports, they are thought to be incomplete. As many as half the fatalities are thought to have underlying medical causes, primarily heart attacks and stroke.

In 2016, the latest year for which statistics are available, there were 701 recreational boating fatalities in the United States. Of these, 15 occurred on sailboats. Of these 15 sailing fatalities, 11 occurred on sailboats large enough to have an engine. Unlike the situation with diving, fatalities that have underlying medical causes are not included in the statistics.

There are 14 million boats (including power, paddle, and sail) in the United States, based on registration data. There are thought to be around 3 million active SCUBA divers in the United States based on industry data.

Which is the safer activity depends on how you interpret the statistics.

From what you say Jammer, I think it would be require serious statistical backflips to conclude sailing in a cruising-style boat is anywhere near as dangerous as scuba. My back of the napkin calculation would put the risk in scuba as two or three magnitudes greater than cruising. I don’t think they’re comparable in any meaningful way.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

Would have to disagree on this, in that the danger in scuba is much more immediate and the consequences of very simple mistakes can be much more serious (and can happen and escalate much more quickly). Throw in the machismo factor several divers I have known had (and some still have) and...

As for statistics, though morbid, it seems the 'deaths per hours pursued' for each sport would give the best rough quantification of relative dangerousness...

I think statistics would need to be better defined.
For example:
Are heart attacks while diving.... A diving accident?
If you are lost from the pick up boat or drown going to or from the dive site....is that a boating or diving casualty?

Bad Air and overwhelming currents seem to be the most common killer after decompression sickness, but in most cases, the real killer is Panic!.
This is what kills most people in both sports.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

From what you say Jammer, I think it would be require serious statistical backflips to conclude sailing in a cruising-style boat is anywhere near as dangerous as scuba. My back of the napkin calculation would put the risk in scuba as two or three magnitudes greater than cruising. I don’t think they’re comparable in any meaningful way.

I don't know.. they do have some things in common.. both mediums have gone out to follow their 'hobby' only to disappear.. never to be seen again.
$hit happens

[KJThomas]

SCUBA diving is only safe, because of the rigid adherence to safety rules.
Sailing is still safe even without that rigidity.
A lot of things have to go wrong to drown a sailor.
One thing can kill a diver.

[thomm225]

Sailing is safer for the simple fact that it occurs above the water.

Also, most folks know their limits and don't try to go beyond them.

One serious mistake in diving and you can die.

One serious mistake in sailing and you may end up going slower or breaking something on your boat which is a lot different

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

From what you say Jammer, I think it would be require serious statistical backflips to conclude sailing in a cruising-style boat is anywhere near as dangerous as scuba. My back of the napkin calculation would put the risk in scuba as two or three magnitudes greater than cruising. I don’t think they’re comparable in any meaningful way.

Perhaps you're right. Here are a few backflips for your enjoyment.

For SCUBA, the best reliable statistics show 40 fatalities a year. Of these, roughly half have causes unrelated to SCUBA diving itself -- the causes are medical. That leaves 20. Of these, maybe 5 are fatalities that occur at the extremes of the sport for people who are knowingly, deliberately taking a calculated risk; generally, these involve highly technical rebreather dives deep into cave systems or shipwrecks. That leaves 15 fatalities a year in the USA involving typical recreational dives. There are 3 million active SCUBA divers in the USA, so we have one fatality per year per 200,000 participants in the sport.

There are about 5,000 sailboats sold per year out of a total of 250,000 boats sold making them 2% of sales. There are 14,000,000 recreational boats in the United States. Arguably, somewhat more than 2% are sailboats, both because sailboats have a longer useful life on average than power boats, and because the sales mix favored sailboats to a greater degree in past years. Let's pick 5%, which gives us a fleet of 700,000 boats.

To arrive at the number of participants in sailing, we have to make an assumption about the number of participants per boat. Let's assume two people per boat, which probably makes sense given that couples often own a boat, and while some will have guests, there are many boats that are registered but not active every year for various reasons. That gives us 1,400,000 people participating in the sport of sailing. There are 15 fatalities a year, just over one per 100,000 participants -- or twice the fatality rate for diving.

The data shows that the vast majority of sailing fatalities occur on sailboats equipped with motors -- that is, cruising-sized boats. We don't know the breakdown of cruising-sized boats vs. smaller boats but even if we were to assume that most boats are cruising-sized we still end up with a fatality rate more than twice that of diving for boats this size.

And even so, cruising fatalities are undercounted for various reasons. Chief among these is that accidents that occur in dinghies are tallied as motorboat accidents and get lost in the data. Cruising is an inherently international activity with many if not most accidents occurring outside U.S. jursidiction. This is in contrast with SCUBA, where accident statistics are reasonably reliable worldwide and don't show much departure from their levels in the U.S.

Now, if you look at hours spent in the activity, the analysis becomes more difficult and may very well lead to a different result, because people who scuba dive typically don't spend as much time at it as cruisers spend cruising. But that leads to a discussion of what constitutes risk exposure, and the outcome of that discussion is not clear.

[rickdamico]

I'm impressed you used the word excogitates!

[Lihuedooley77]

Not sure that it is important to match diving accidents to sailing .

Except in one very important factor.

SCUBA DIVING requires training, and testing, and check outs, and is very comprehensive.

Flying requires, physical exams, study, and instruction, experience, and tests and check outs.

Sailing or power boating.....just go to the broker and by a boat. And, that is very evident in observing some of the vessels that we see out there . Not all, we see some great sailors and motor vessel skippers, but it seems the times they are a changing.

The main thing with boats now, is the dozen or so electronic whizding devices that they have on board. Are they important, certainly, but there is a lot more to skippers responsibility than turning a switch to ON.

It seems now, that seamanship, coastal piloting, and navigation, sailing vessels out of and back into docks, knot tying, marine weather, piloting rules of the road, signal lights and day shapes, etc, , etc, are no longer important to some of those sailing or boating.

Us old sailors , sadly, are becoming a dying breed. But, we are still living that sailing dream and have 40 years of amazing memories.

Main point as to safety, Sailing, power boating, diving, or flying or even wilderness hiking .

We feel when in an alien enviornment, it is very important to learn as much as you can and approach any or all of them in a professional manner.

We have done all of the above, and are still going strong, and maintain those professional attitudes and are having a grand time.

Mother nature, in, on or under the sea, or in the air is one tuff critter, she does not love you and can kill you. Treating her with indifference is a very bad idea.

Will our thoughts change anything, nope. But we want all of you and your family and crews to keep on enjoying and staying safe in all aspects of life and adventure.

I think, that most of us, when we read about a diving, or boating, or sailing, or aircraft accident, we tend to search in our minds as to what happened, and what went wrong, and what we would have done. And also learn so that we do not let the same thing happen to us.

Generally we do not have all of the information, and it is diffucult to second guess all of the components of the incident. But, we do it anyway.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Jammer

Perhaps you're right. Here are a few backflips for your enjoyment….

Yup, that’s some nice flipping’ .

I think we’re both taking this lightly, which is great (the comparison, not the fact that there is real risk and real mortality in both activities). No matter how they compare, your broader comment about the safety culture around boating is always worth considering.

My observation is that newsworthy boating accidents receive a lot of discussion here on CF. I don’t tend to take part in them b/c I have little of use to contribute, and all too often they feel like Sunday morning quarterbacking to me. Too much speculation, based on too few facts, ripe with too much personal bias.

Sometimes there are lessons to be learned from these events. More often I think the complexity of cruising means it’s impossible to trace a rational line of failure or fault. As with life in general, sometimes shyte happens.

[RaymondR]

Eventually it all comes down to fate.

What's the definition of fate?

Fate is the rationalization for something you know you should not have done in the first place.

[flyingnut40]

As a pilot of years gone by, I read every accident report to try and figure out what went wrong to cause the accident and after identifying what went wrong I was able to sleep that night knowing that I would not likely make that mistake...... like deploying flaps too soon on engine failure etc.
After doing this MANY times, I eventually asked a different question.
If a pilot with 10,000 hrs. can make THAT mistake what makes me think I'll handle the stresses of an emergency that much better with my 250 hrs.???
It's called cockpit management and training and planning for crisis so knowing what to do gets embedded in your mind so it becomes automatic.
I choose to spend less time analizing and more time thinking about "What if's"
Dennis

[captmikem]

I think the big difference is sailing is inherently safe. Not much can happen to you on a boat at sea. Near shore, you can run into people or visa versa, or you can run up on the rocks or a reef (which happens pretty often) but only occasionally do people die doing that. Of course there are very rare instances of boats being sunk at sea, or in really bad weather, but again these are rare. Scuba diving requires constant vigilance, sailing hardly ever has a time (except near shore or in traffic) that you can’t just take a rest and snooze for a few hours, then get back to the calamity at hand.

Most of the “boating deaths” are people either drunk or going to fast in small powerboats or dingies, hard to relate that to sailing accidents.

As to sailing and flying being alike, I disagree totally. Flying takes constant vigilance, a very high attention to maintenance, and constant refreshing of skills. There have been a few times I wished I could ‘heave to’ in a plane, unfortunately it is not possible. If you quit sailing, you just roll around, if you quit flying, you are going down in a matter of seconds.
M

[Tayana42]

Jammer, here is one data point for you. I’ve been sailing for 50 years. I’m not dead yet.

I think you’ve missed a lot of discussions on this forum about sailing or boating accidents and/or deaths. I recall long threads trying to analyze keel failures, sinkings, rigging failures, navigational errors, boats on the rocks entering or leaving harbor, crew overboard recoveries or deaths, storm management and lots of anchor dragging situations.

I suspect we all want to figure out what went wrong, what the skipper did wrong and how we could avoid that outcome. It is an important part of how we learn. Unfortunately, like the lost sailor out of Pepin City you posted about, we often don’t have much to go on but speculation.

Still, the effort to think things through is part and parcel of keeping our boats and our crews as safe as possible. Keep it up.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by flyingnut40

As a pilot of years gone by, I read every accident report to try and figure out what went wrong to cause the accident and after identifying what went wrong I was able to sleep that night knowing that I would not likely make that mistake...... like deploying flaps too soon on engine failure etc.
After doing this MANY times, I eventually asked a different question.
If a pilot with 10,000 hrs. can make THAT mistake what makes me think I'll handle the stresses of an emergency that much better with my 250 hrs.???
It's called cockpit management and training and planning for crisis so knowing what to do gets embedded in your mind so it becomes automatic.
I choose to spend less time analizing and more time thinking about "What if's"
Dennis

Exactly! [emoji106]
I like to call it "Professional Pessimism" ....and it is what helps me to prevent Panic in any stressful situation