No matter the course scheme you choose, the course you are doing, you will encounter a Man Overboard (MOB) exercise at one point. If you choose not to do any courses, I do recommend you practise these with your regular crew to gain confidence when you need to pick something out of the water. If you are only sailing in nice weather, it will most probably to save you some money when you lose a cushion or a hat.
I call this easy way as, when I showed it to my last instructor, his response was, “My son in his teens could do this it is so easy!” Yachting Monthly has an explanation for it but they specify it’s for couples and I like to have one easy way to do things all the time no matter how much crew I have on the boat. There are a couple of variants but I’ll discuss those through the different steps.
Starting the Exercise
The first time you do the exercise, I recommend starting on a beam reach. It makes the understanding of the direction a lot easier. If you don’t know what a beam reach is, you can always look at this article, where I discuss the different names based on the wind direction related to the boat. As you get the procedure engraved into your memory, you can challenge yourself to start it on different wind angles.
Safety Rules to Follow
Throughout the entire exercise, I have a couple of rules I follow to avoid having a second or third person in the water. The main one is no one ever walks on the leeward side of a sail. Another one is if there is a man overboard, no matter what you are doing, it is all hands on deck. If you haven’t been assigned something, you sit down in the cockpit ideally with your life jacket on and clipped in.
The goal isn’t to become a dictator even if it does happen but because you need one person with a clear procedure and as much help as possible to get that person back onboard quickly.
Step 1 : Oh No!
The worst has happened! Your best friend Bob has fallen in (it lightens up the exercise to give your fender or any other object a name). There are now a series of steps you initially go through.
The Initial Reflexes to Have
These don’t all have to be in this exact order but it is the way I like to do it.
- Raise the alarm: Shout Man Overboard!
- Assign a spotter. This could be you on a calm day if you are shorthanded.
- Turn your engine on.
- Grab your VHF and put out a DSC distress call and a voice mayday. If you have crew send someone down to take care of all of it.
- Throw your Dan Buoy, life ring or anything you have that floats to keep a track of where the person is.
Step 2 : Let's Manoeuvre the Boat
This is where I use the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) theory. You have two choices at this point. You can either continue on a beam reach or you can head on an in between beam and broad reach. I prefer the latter as it sets up the pick-up slightly better.
While I’m getting further away from the person, I like to start prepping for the next manoeuvre. As I come through the tack, I’m going to want to furl away my head sail and then tighten up the main. I would never condone winching in on a furling line but if you are the only one onboard at this point, do you really care about breaking something if it means saving a life? With this in mind, I get my furling around the winch and ready to pull in and I do the same with my main sheet. It should already be there with the clutch or jammer open but we never know.
After going about 4 to 5 boat lengths, it’s time to tack! Get that boat over and aim about 2 boat lengths higher up than your MOB. Get that sail furled away and get that main centred.
Variation Time
I’ve seen some people at this point do a slight variation here. I can explain at the end why I don’t like it but the main idea is that instead of furling the head sail, they crash tack it and they release the main sail.
Step 3 : Get to the Person
If you chose to go more towards the broad reach on your way out, you should be able to be on a close reach coming up making that main nicely placed in the centre and driving you well in the direction you want to go. At this point your goal is to use your engine in slight reverse to slow yourself down after about midway as you start moving the boat back to a beam reach. I like to keep my MOB about at the level of the shrouds to not have to worry about legs and feet near the prop.
Step 4 : Let the Wind Take You
At this point, it’s all about throttle control. As the wind hits the sail, it will push you quickly onto the person. Because of the physics behind it, you will need to use your throttle forward and back to stay lined up with the person. I only like to use tick over at this point to avoid having to overcorrect and deal with prop walk too much. As you arrive within about 2-3 metres of the person, make sure to go to neutral. It isn’t time to use the boat as a blender.
As you drift down, send crew up on deck on the windward side and they can come back to the shrouds on the leeward side to be ready to pick up.
The Pick-Up
After doing these exercises so many times, I have rarely discussed how to get 180 pounds or 80 kilograms back on board because that won’t take 2 seconds with a boat hook. The easiest would be to let the person get to the swim ladder and they can climb.
What do we do if the person is unconscious? I like to buy myself as much time as possible when in an emergency, especially when a life is on the line. I like the idea of lassoing the person with a mooring line and tightening them up to the hull. It might bruise them up but I prefer that to losing the person at sea. That gets enough time to set up a block and pulley or a line to a winch to be able to hoist them out.
Critique of the Variation
First of all, I wouldn’t critique a technique if I hadn’t already tried it out on the water. I definitely see that it requires less work to crash tack and release a main than winch everything in.
The place I see the issue is once you start drifting down. As the wind is pushing on the head sail, it puts a lot of force on the bow of the boat. It thus becomes quite hard to avoid the boat twisting downwind and having that main sail power up. Sadly, this tends to happen when you are right next to the person and you are trying to hold the boat. Given that you need quite a lot of time to lift an unconscious, wet person, I prefer to be able to hold the boat easily.
There is another issue I see here. Being able to hove to a boat makes it harder to use the engine to line up well with the person since your rudder needs to be turning you upwind. This means that you need to be playing around with your helm quite a lot.
Coming back to the safety rules I impose upon myself, it forces a person going up on deck to be on the leeward side of a sail. If a sheet snaps, that person is almost certainly unconscious in the water.
Last but not least, this works well with a jib or a small genoa. With a big headsail, hoving to needs to be extremely precise and I don’t see myself focusing on that manoeuvre when I have someone in the water and you need to do things quickly to avoid any other issues.
The Person is Saved!
After all this talking through it, the important thing to remember is it doesn’t matter what you did, as long as the person is back onboard. Whether you chose to go for the variation or you went 100% under sail and used the classic figure of eight, it doesn’t matter. I like this technique as it is easy and allows almost anyone to accomplish it in a timely manner while taking calculated risks such as “Will the engine start?”
Quick mention that I use “Man Overboard” because it is the way I was taught to call it since I started sailing. In this case, “Man” is used as human and not as gender. You evidently would use the same procedure no matter the person’s gender or age.