How to recover a man overboard
Man overboard recovery is a key exercise for Clipper Race crews. Victorious skipper Chris Brooks gives Andy Rice some important tips on the process
After 45,000 nautical miles in the Clipper Round the World Race, skipper Chris Brooks was relieved that his crew on Qingdao never had to put their rehearsed man overboard (MOB) drills into practice.
With Clipper Race crews covering thousands of nautical miles, there are strict rules in place to avoid MOB situations. “It’s a race for amateurs, many of whom have very little sailing experience, so there are a lot of rules that we abide by on the boat. When the wind is over 15 knots we are always clipped. At night we are buckled up all the time. So people get used to being quite efficient with their tethers, unlatching them in one place and clipping them in another smoothly and quickly. Like anything, it becomes quite a skill with practice,” explains Brooks.
Added to this is the tireless training of MOB drills. “People get four weeks of training before the start of the race and pretty much every day of training we will practice a MOB.
“We use a 50kg dummy, which isn’t as heavy as most sailors, but still heavy enough for people to understand how difficult it is to lift a body out of the water, especially when all your clothes are soaked and their boots are full of water .
“I used to try to do the MOB drills at night with a spinnaker. What is the most likely and most difficult scenario that we could face in a MOB situation? The answer is windy conditions at night with the spinnaker up. So we practiced that.”
Man Overboard Record Sheet
Keep a record sheet for your MOB process in key locations around the boat. On Qingdao we had laminated copies in the heads, at the navigation station and also in the galley. So when you use the heads you see the proof sheet right in your eye line and it makes sure the process gets ingrained in your memory.
Blow the pen
Some skippers believe that you should bring down the gennaker as efficiently as possible, others believe that in a MOB situation you should cut all halyards and sheets and release the gennaker as quickly as possible. But my concern would be what if the gennaker – now in the water – wraps around the keel or worse the propeller? So we tried to immediately blow the tack line, which immediately takes the power out of the gennaker and reduces your speed from say 11 knots to 7 knots.
Because of the length of the legs in the Clipper Race and the rarity of our maneuvers, we always ran a halyard line through the boom so we could do a “letterbox” fall. At the start of each watch, especially in heavy weather, I made sure everyone was briefed on who would take which position if a bounce was required. We did that anyway from a racing perspective, but it also meant that everyone knew what to do in an emergency situation.
pick up leeward
So once we’ve started the engine, headsails down and gone, we’ve checked for lines in the water, we make our way back to the MOB with only mainsail. The safest approach is a close-hauled position.
The question for some is whether to record a MOB from the windward or leeward side of the boat. I’ve heard from some people in dinghy sailing that it’s much nicer to have them on the windward side because in big conditions you don’t want the boat bobbing up and down a seaway and possibly hurting your MOB.
But in my experience, having trained with the Clipper Race in a variety of conditions, I think one of the biggest probabilities of a fatality in a MOB situation is simply losing your man overboard and not making contact with them. So if you catch up on the leeward side, the movement of the boat is such that you are more likely to come into contact with that person. They also protect them a bit from the sea conditions. They are not washed against the boat by the water, so it could be argued that they are less likely to be injured than if they were on the windward side.
Do you have a lifeguard
On the Clipper yachts we have a lifeguard, a crew member attached to a halyard waiting at the leewant, ready to jump in the water to help get the MOB back onto the boat, especially if they are unconscious. But of course on a clipper boat we have at least 14 crew members, so we have people working in very dedicated, specific roles. If you’re in a smaller crew, and certainly if you’re two-handed, you won’t have the luxury of being able to assign such niche roles. So make sure your procedures are tailored to your specific boat and circumstances.
Man overboard process and practice
Regatta sailors really focus on improving all their skills to make the boat go faster. The more you refine and practice these processes, the better you become. The same applies to MOB drills. The most important thing is the process and the practice. I think it would be good for more Grand Prix racing teams to practice their MOB procedures as seriously as they do dropping a spinnaker a boat length from the mark or running the boat hard downwind.
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