Seamanship is common sense learned upon the sea. We sailors can learn—hell, even stinkpotters can learn. One thing that I learned as a teenager sailing offshore aboard my Atkin-designed double-ender was how easy it was to lose companionway slides overboard during heavy weather.
Doubt me? Then study the British marine safety reports after the 1979 Fastnet disaster. Racing vessels survived their first 360-degree roll but lost their companionway slides in the process. There were terrified, cold, wet, injured crewmembers on boats half full of water with no way to prevent more seawater from entering the boat. Many of them died during the next roll.
The ultra-simple act of attaching loose companionway slides to your vessel costs nothing. It’s common sense and basic seamanship.
Here’s a question for you, dear reader: Which is the best, safest vessel in survival conditions? Is it a million-dollar sloop with many openings that are open? Or is it a modest sloop with closed ventilators, hatches and companionway?
The answer is obvious. Thus, for the past 50 years and numerous circumnavigations, I’ve had my companionway slides attached to my vessel—first by nylon and now by super-strong Kevlar string. I keep them attached 24/7 so that I never forget. This solution is simple, cheap and effective.
In the past 64 years of (mostly) living on the hook, my boat has been struck numerous times at anchor—mostly by dragging yachts but occasionally by large commercial vessels adrift. The first time this happened, as my anchor gear was holding a small freighter sideways to the wind, I couldn’t release my anchor rode because its splice was looped around my bitts. I couldn’t pull in enough slack to remove it.
Oops.
My vessel was damaged as I ran to the foredeck (naked), realized that I needed a knife, went back aft to fetch the knife, and then returned to the foredeck to slash the splice.
Since then, I’ve never allowed a splice to be in my anchor rode or towline. If I have to use a towline with a splice, I ignore the splice.
Again, seamanship is just common sense based on experience at sea.
I goof up all the time. I’m human. To err is human. Thus, there is no shame in goofing up.
The shame is in goofing up twice in the same way.
Being afloat is fun, but being a floater is not. Once, I wrapped my dinghy painter in my prop. Notice that I didn’t say twice. I now use floating, and less expensive, polypropylene line for my dinghy painter. And, while I’m at it, I have a heavy plastic float to weigh down my painter inside my inflatable. That way, I can visually check that my dinghy painter won’t run back out over my bow as I plane off. It won’t catch in my dinghy’s prop.
Speaking of knives, I always have one on me while offshore. My favorite is a locking Spyderco Dragonfly that is easy to open with one wet hand. This knife is so light that I don’t even notice it clipped to the back of my T-shirt collar. It’s ever-ready when I rush on deck at night during an emergency.
Dinghies under tow are dangerous, even in benign conditions when they don’t seem to be. When a skipper went overboard on a light-air day along the south side of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, his new bride didn’t feel competent to luff up or stop the 50-some-foot vessel under full sail. It wasn’t easy pulling the dinghy up to the transom, but she managed. Then she hopped in and stood there looking at the engine as the 100-foot painter took up and catapulted her clean over the outboard engine into the Caribbean Sea.
Thank you, Augusto of Orient Express, for saving both of their lives.
Some lessons are learned the hard way, as my sister Gale found out when we were kids. She got her scarf caught in the flywheel of a gasoline-driven deck pump. Not only did it smash her face into the pump housing, but it smashed it repeatedly with each revolution as my blood-splattered older sister, Carole, and I screamed, “Oh, gross!”
Poor Gale hasn’t worn a scarf since.
Yes, feces happens when you least expect it. I was sailing into the harbor at West End in New Orleans as nicely as you please, with the rail down in the gusts on Lake Pontchartrain. I failed to notice a boathouse roof that extended over the channel. My boat snatched said roof away with the masthead. You wouldn’t believe the sound that tin roof made flapping goofily from my rig.
Not all drowned sailors are found with their zipper down. Deck buckets have killed many a sailor who only desired to swab the deck of some lubber’s puke. I use buckets with breakaway handles to prevent this from happening.
Of course, we all know why the boom is called the boom. Hell, for the first few years of my seagoing youth, I automatically saw stars at the mere mention of the word “boom.” And yes, it is hard to let go quickly of a halyard under load—especially when the spinnaker is pulling you skyward off the deck. (Pro hint: Release your grip well before you get to the spreaders.)
Offshore, I don’t put much value in life jackets. The difficulties of finding and recovering a person overboard are immense in moderate weather and virtually impossible in a severe blow with breaking seas.
However, for the identical reason, I do use my safety harness religiously. My idea isn’t that a safety harness should keep you attached to the vessel, but rather that it should prevent you from going overboard in the first place. This means that the harness must be clipped to windward to prevent you from going overboard to leeward.
My custom-made safety harness has two tethers with stainless-steel wide-mouth clips—a long and a short one. This setup, combined with the jackline on deck, allows me maximum mobility with maximum strength and safety. These tethers snap on via a snap shackle that can be released under load—you know, in case my harness is holding me underwater during a slow roll.
While dismasted boats roll quickly, boats with their rigs or a storm trysail still up roll s-l-o-w-l-y. Regardless, tethers must be mounted high on the chest so that the harness tows head-up, not feet-up.
Safety harnesses take some getting used to. Although they’ve saved my life on numerous occasions, they’ve almost killed me as well. Getting the webbing caught in my windlass while on the foredeck in a Southern Ocean gale as I was retrieving my Para-Tech sea anchor was rather disconcerting. On another occasion, doing “the pole dance” on the foredeck with two oversize spinnaker poles, six control guys and four sheets is always fun, especially with the boat rolling from rail to rail without canvas, off the wind.
One time, with Carolyn busy below in the forward head, a stray sheet tossed a half hitch around my left wrist. It repeatedly lifted me heavenward while my safety harness violently yanked me back to the foredeck.
“You sound like a herd of elephants up there, Fatty!” she hollered from below.
Indeed.
Ultimately, my Casio Pathfinder wristwatch broke its metal band, and I was able to wipe the sheet off my arm while ass-over-teakettle on the now-splotchy-red foredeck.
Painful.
Sinking offshore always results in a few funny sea yarns. That’s been my experience, at least. Yes, stepping below to floating floorboards always piques a sailor’s interest.
However, on modern vessels, things get really serious when the lithium batteries submerge aglow. That’s why we carry a portable Edson manual bilge pump that throws a 2-inch stream of water. It will work long after your lithiums are toast. And the pump can be moved from compartment to compartment after wet clothes plug all your limber holes.
My point is that seamanship matters more than a bank account. All the gold in the world tucked into a safe-deposit box in Zurich won’t help you survive a Southern Ocean gale.
Which is safer during a knockdown? A beat-up $40,000 Southern Cross 32 with closed hatches, or a $3-million air-conditioned layer cake with open hatches? And with oxygen masks on its ultra-high boom? And with sliding glass patio doors that a US Coast Guard cutter could fit through?
You decide. If you go offshore, your life—and the lives of your spouse, your children and your friends—will depend on that judgment every single day, and every single ocean mile sailed.
The most common lie that a lonely sailor tells their nonsailing spouse is, “With modern electronics, there’s no need to ever go through a storm offshore.”
It’s actually true. There isn’t—as long as you keep that dock queen tethered to its electrical umbilical cord.
But if you unplug and venture beyond the breakwater, seamanship—common sense upon the sea—counts more than gold.
