Our yacht club held a safety event at the weekend. Thames Coastguard kindly agreed to come and collect our old flares.
I think they were rather overwhelmed by the response: some 1,400 out of date pyrotechnics were handed in, and duly transported (four trips in the CG Land Rover!) to the Ministry of Defence at Colchester. Apparently they will be burned on the explosives disposal range at Shoeburyness. Should be spectacular….!
Most of the flares were relatively recent and apparently in good condition, although there were one or two horror stories (waterlogged items presumably retrieved from liferafts). The oldest flare handed in expired in 1973!
Anyway, we were all glad to see the back of them. A donation to the RNLI was requested from everyone handing in old flares, raising towards £1,000.
“Several garden sheds will be a lot safer than before!” said Terry Corner of the Harwich Lifeboat station, who was doing sea checks on members' boats, and then put on a demonstration about man overboard recovery from a yacht.
He didn't use a live MOB, but rather a dummy, which he assured us was the appropriate bodyweight, and which certainly provided a clear demonstration of the extreme difficulties which would be encountered in getting an unconscious casualty back on board.
For even in the flat waters of the marina, the demonstrators struggled. Firstly, the dummy's lifejacket failed to inflate when he was dropped into the water. They had to push him under with a boathook to make that happen - a practice Terry emphatically didn't recommend! And every other technique seemed to involve almost equally drastic manhandling.
Terry Corner said that RNLI crew did not like getting a dead body out of the water: “They can tell if the casualty is dead or alive, because a body floats in a different way.”
So all rescue efforts focus on keeping the MOB alive.
His first advice was to stop the engine. “Modern engines are quite reliable and will restart if you need it,” he said. The next step was to launch the transom ladder if fitted.
“Don't underestimate how deep it needs to be in the water.”
If you don't have a boarding ladder on your boat, he recommended carrying an emergency ladder, like the Kim safety ladder, which launches at the pull of a cord.
This would certainly provide good handholds for a conscious casualty, and help rescuers get them aboard, but it would be difficult to climb, because there is nothing to hold the rungs away from the hull.
Terry said a life sling could be useful for a conscious casualty, “But it's very difficult to get any form of sling around an inert body.”
One of the easiest ways of getting a conscious person back on board, he said, was to drop a bight of rope over the side, secured towards the bow and taken back to a cockpit winch. The MOB could stand on the rope, which could be winched up as an improvised lift.
Alternatively, the mainsheet could be unclipped and used as a block and tackle to lift the casualty, or it might be easier to pull him out on the main halyard - provided you could reach over the side to attach it to his harness. (And both these techniques only work if the casualty is already wearing a harness with a ring the shackle can be quickly attached to)
A small sail like a storm jib could be used as a parbuckle, attached to the side of the boat, to winch the casualty aboard. A rubber dinghy could also be helpful, if it could be deployed in time, because it might be easier to get the person into the dinghy and then on to the yacht than straight on to the yacht.
There were quite a few hitches in the demonstration, the dummy proving singularly unco-operative, but as Terry said, they were typical of what would happen with people trying to do these things in a hurry.
And in conclusion, he said: “I don't think any of these are guaranteed to work, but hopefully one of them will work, whatever the circumstances.”
However, he advised that calling the lifeboat and the helicopter should be a priority.
The other messages he wanted to stress were:
- 1: Stay clipped on to the boat
- 2: Always wear a lifejacket.
Terry pointed out that the standard two metre safety line would not necessarily prevent you falling over the side of the boat - even though it would ensure that you remained attached to the boat, and would make it easier for rescuers to get you back on board.
However, he recommended doubling the line - for instance by putting it round the jackstay and then clipping it back to the harness - to make sure that you didn't go over the side.
“It is most important that if one person has gone over the side, that is the only person who has gone over the side,” he said, stressing the need for those left on board to ensure that they are safely clipped on and at no risk of making the situation worse before attempting rescue.
