Tradewinds Sailing Blog

Sunday Bruce, Johannes and I (Colin) took Pacific High out. As we were preparing to go I said to the crew, let’s try to get to the Golden Gate but if we cannot make it in time with the early sunset we can do some man-over-board practice, last time I was out we nearly lost Chuck and Bob as we could not see them in the sun’s glare.

We should have realized Poseidon agreed we needed more practice, as he provided a first test by placing an empty 10 gallon diesel jug in the channel for us to chase and pickup on the way out.

The winds were with us and we made it to the Golden Gate without any further incident. After the obligatory picture beneath the bridge and looking back towards San Francisco we turned around and started sailing back talking about how lucky we were to be out on such a nice day in such a beautiful place.

What seemed like quite soon after getting under the bridge we saw a wing surfer sitting on his board, holding his wing up, more like a sail and not really going anywhere. This seemed a little odd and as it was easy Bruce adjusted our course to go by him. As we got closer we started communicating by hand signals. We got a thumbs up, he was fine. As we got to hearing distance we again asked if he was okay and this time he said yes but if we had a line he could do with a tow upwind (he meant down wind but up current but we knew what he meant).

I told Bruce we are going after him, bring the boat around. Bruce conducted a figure eight maneuver, Johannes handled the sails and everything but the helm on the boat and I found the longest line in the locker. We attached it to the stern cleat and put a bowline on the far end. We caught ourselves a wing surfer on the line! I asked where he wanted to go. Not so surprisingly, for any locals, the beach near St Francis Yacht Club. It became quickly apparent even with us loosing as much speed as we could and getting the speed over ground down to 2 knots he was finding it hard to hold on. The wing was dragging behind him in the water. After a chat over the transom he suggested deflating his wing. We all agreed this was a good idea and he promptly let go of the tow line! That had not been in our plan! Clearly this was to help Bruce with his MOB practice! We did another figure 8, this time I was smarter with the line and tied a fender to it so we could see it and to stop it sinking. We caught the wing surfer again. Again with us now rolling up the jib and going at only 1.5 knots speed over ground, but maybe 2 knots faster through the water he was struggling to hold on. I offered, “why don’t you just come aboard ?” He did not need a second offer and we dropped the swim ladder down and pulled the line in and got him to the ladder. We took the deflated wing, board and surfer on board then pulled out the jib, pushed out the main and started sailing to where he wanted to be dropped off. As we go closer to the beach we watched the depth and when it hit 30 feet we hove-to (stopped the boat) and released our catch to swim back.

We then called Tradewinds to warn them we might be late returning, but in the end the winds were with us and we made it back to the slip including stopping at the pump out dock 10 minutes before sunset.

A number of thoughts occurred to me after this lesson from Poseidon.

Was the wing surfer really in danger? He thought so enough to ask a random stranger for help, if he was able to rescue himself it would have been more risky. Given the quite strong current and that it was still increasing we think he would have been sucked under the Golden Gate bridge and would have been in a lot more trouble later. We think it was the right call.

Should we have initially refused to tow him, hove-to and made him get on our boat? It is hard to know how he would have reacted, but I suspect he was not yet ready to admit he needed that much help.

We had three people in the boat to rescue one person in the water, could we have done it with less? Maybe but it was extremely useful to have a helm, a crew and a lineman / communicator. I did not see anyone resting.

Should we have dropped the sails and used the engine? It would have taken time to do this and we would have had the extra risk of a line and man in the water with a spinning propeller. Doing the whole rescue under sail seemed at the time the more prudent thing to do.

Next time you are out practice your man overboard, pick up that fender you see in the distance just don’t let Poseidon know you want to practice man over board!

By Tradewinds Member Colin T.

About 30 years ago, the event all of us hope we’ll never face happened to me: my crew was hit by the boom in an accidental jibe and I had a real-life man overboard with an injured victim. Terry Shrode was in the water. We had done so much sailing together and were so sympatico on the boat that little need be said regarding maneuvers. We took it for granted that we were competent, and this is a very dangerous state of mind. As the saying goes, just when you think you know what you’re doing, “the sea will find your mistakes.” 

When this happened, I was very quickly disabused of the fantasy that, in an emergency, I would keep a cool head. Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who landed an Airbus 320 in the Hudson River, taught emergency procedures. When asked if he panicked when his engines failed, he said that he observed in himself the physiological symptoms of stress: increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and a surge of adrenalin. Yet he didn’t submit to them, but reverted to his training, which was what saved his life and those of the 154 other people on board. In our case, Terry was overboard, and I knew he was hurt. I was alone on the boat, my heart was in my throat, my mind was flopping around like a wounded snake, and every cell in my body told me, “He’s right there!! Turn the boat around!!” But the figure eight recovery method had been so frequently practiced that, emotions notwithstanding, I knew exactly what I had to do. I executed, to my great relief, a perfect return to Terry, and brought the boat to a stop just to windward of him. Though dazed, he was able to regain the deck via the swim ladder, bloodied but not seriously injured. A boom on a 39-foot sailboat is a lethal weapon and that’s what had hit him. Fortunately, it was a glancing blow and he’s a tough guy.

We teach the figure eight method at Tradewinds. It is easy to take the figure eight for granted, yet it is a brilliant piece of seamanship. It doesn’t involve a jibe, which may cause other injuries when there are non-sailors aboard. It allows you time to maneuver the boat accurately and come to a stop, and to make a line ready. If done properly, it is an automatic way of determining a reciprocal course, since when you establish a beam reach and then tack to another beam reach, you’ve turned around 180 degrees just by looking at the windvane atop the mast. You don’t have to do the subtraction from a compass bearing or hit the MOB button on the GPS (processes you’re most likely not practiced at that take your focus off the victim). This is crucial in situations where a heavy chop causes you to lose sight of the person in the water, as it will return you to a point where you can see them.

When we teach it in class, we are in a controlled setting where all of the crew knows what is going on. Yet when it happens in real life, you will not have any warning, and now are likely to be either alone without crew, or with family or friends who are not sailors. If the former, you have to do all of the jobs yourself—tossing a type 4, spotting, retrieving the boat hook and lines, handling sails—while at the same time perfectly steering through the figure eight pattern. If the latter, frantic guests will not understand why you are sailing away from their loved one, and may scream at you or even try to take the helm or jump in the water. The situation may be extremely chaotic, adding to your own considerable stress. This is when your practice will save the day.

We use START Back: Shout “man overboard!”-Throw the type 4-Appoint a spotter- get on a beam Reach-Tack. After practice, we should be able to accomplish the first four steps in 10 to 15 seconds and be sailing away from the victim on a beam reach. You need to turn to a beam reach quickly, lest the geometry of the figure eight is thrown out of whack. If executed properly, the entire maneuver should place you next to the person in the water in 90 seconds with the boat stopped, the goal we shoot for in all conditions. It is also wise to remember that, contrary to what you may think, the rules of the road are not suspended during your maneuvering. Other skippers cannot be depended on to notice you have a person in the water, and you don’t want to make a bad situation worse by causing an accident.

After sailing a few boat lengths and tacking, stay on a beam reach until you spot the victim, and then head about 1-1/2 boat lengths to leeward of them. Then when they are about 45 degrees to windward off the bow, head up and lean to leeward so you can keep them in sight. With practice, you can get the boat dead stopped just to windward—and you must. If you can’t get the boat stopped, you will not have enough time to secure the victim to the boat before you’ve sailed right past. (If this happens, start the maneuver from the beginning as you cannot wish the sailboat back to the victim.)

If you are alone or with non-sailors, you will have to trim the main for a beam reach yourself. This doesn’t have to be fancy, as you’re not racing; just put the boom approximately over the corner of the cabin top. You will almost certainly have to leave the helm to do this except on our small boats. The main will not have to be touched again through the whole maneuver, and is especially unwise to do so when making the final approach to the victim. When trimmed for a beam reach, it will automatically luff as you head up to a close reach, without your having to touch the sheet. This is not the time you want to leave the helm and take your eyes off the victim to do something that has no effect. As to the jib, in real life I would just release it and let it flail. The sheet may find the water and give the victim his only chance of grabbing something. There is nothing to hold on to on the side of a boat. You don’t need the extra sail; we want to be going slow. However, at Tradewinds we don’t have you do this when practicing, as flogging the jib is a good way to damage it. So practice with the jib but don’t worry about it in a true emergency.

As to entertaining the idea that if you don’t know how to manage the return under sail, you’ll just start the motor: forget it. This is at times used on fully-crewed ocean-going boats who have practiced it. You can’t do a figure-eight with a spinnaker up, for example. But for ordinary sailing, the sails will not allow normal maneuvering under power and in fact will create the danger of an accidental jibe. Alternatively, if you choose to get them down, by the time you do you’ll have lost sight of the victim.

Back to that accidental jibe, a rookie mistake. We had sailed into Marina Bay well over 100 times without a problem. The jib had been furled and to start the engine, I needed to leave the helm for about two seconds on Maverick to switch to the starter battery. That day the wind had just a bit more west in it than normal, and the buildings upwind had created turbulence in their lee. This had never presented a problem before, but today a shift occurred just when I left the helm, and the boom came over. Our ASA procedure is to go forward on the windward side, which is where Terry was; but this, it should be clear, is safe only when on a beam reach or above. On a broad reach, it is safer use the leeward side, as the boom will swing away from you.

Terry and I have been through quite a few close calls, but because we have a mysterious connection with good fortune, we have managed them all. This was one that never happened again.

                You don’t want to be slipping on the deck of a boat. At best, you look the fool. At worst, you’re in the drink. And in between, there’s a bunch of stuff to knock your head or bruise your backside on. Believe it or not, the best thing to do, although they deny this in all the sailing books, is to go barefoot. Bare feet have something even the most advanced sailing footwear can’t provide: nerve endings. When you step on a slippery surface in your bare feet, you can tell before you fall that you have no traction. This is better than finding out when you’re fanny-over-teakettle. “Crivens! That was slippery!” Of course, there will be the occasional broken toe when your naked foot encounters a cleat or block, but everything’s a compromise.

                That’s fine for the tropics, but in the extra-tropics where we are, I’m not man enough to go barefoot. Cold feet are one thing when you’re about to get married, but quite another when your actual feet are cold. So San Francisco sailors wear stuff on their feet. Typically, this is a sailing boot that is tall and made out of some rubber-like product. They are hard to get on and off, cold, and clammy.

                Of course, in pleasant weather, any athletic shoe will do, but wear Sperry Topsiders only at the risk of being considered a snotty yachtsperson. OK, I have a pair, I confess, snotty yachtie that I am. But consider this: Once we looked into a race from Fiji to Vanuatu, which we unfortunately couldn’t work into our schedule, and there were some serious rules to be obeyed on pain of disqualification. I’m not making this up: 1) The first boat across the finish line was immediately disqualified. 2) Any boat flying light air sails was disqualified. This was fine with us. We had a spinnaker, but we didn’t know how to use it. Who does, anyway? 3) Anyone wearing Sperry Topsiders was disqualified. Bear this in mind if you want to compete at the highest levels.

                But getting back to the boots, I always wonder why people really need that height. How many times on a sail around the Bay have you had ten inches of water in the cockpit?

                In the winter or wet weather I wear duck boots. L.L. Bean, and I mean, Leon Leonwood Bean himself, invented them.

But there are lots of knock-offs and they come in a variety of heights. They lace up so you can adjust them to the perfect comfy snugness. You can buy them lined with insulation so they are nice and toasty. Should you find yourself swimming, it is possible to untie them and kick them off. The best thing is, their gum soles are as sticky as any boat shoe you can buy—even if they aren’t as secure as bare feet.

                They may not be fashionable, I don’t know. Sometimes people laugh at me, but there could be other reasons for this.

Baseball and fishing such as bass fishing have opening days for the season, but what opens? A gate? A bottle? In the case of sailing on San Francisco Bay there was once something that actually did open on opening day.

In many parts of the country, the climate dictates that boats be taken out of the water for winter, so it’s natural for there to be some sort of celebration when they are recommissioned in the spring. Despite our more temperate climate, the custom was brought here and observed at scattered locations where boats were kept in the 19^th century.

In the late 1800s, some people owned houseboats that they called “arks.” They spent the summer months anchored in quiet Belvedere Cove where the San Francisco Yacht Club is now, but in winter things could get somewhat dicey in the open water. Tiburon Lagoon (now filled in) on the back side of Corinthian Island provided excellent protection, but Main Street, which connected Tiburon to Beach Road and Belvedere Island, would have been in the way. A drawbridge was constructed that permitted the arks to pass into the lagoon for winter on “closing day” in the fall. When the bridge was opened in the spring, “opening day” featured a celebration and parade. Below is a photo from Belvedere looking towards Corinthian Island in summertime, with arks anchored in Belvedere Cove. The place where the bridge once was is circled.

If you go to Tiburon, walk west along Main Street and just after it curves to the right and uphill, on your right you’ll see many of the quaint old arks, now firmly anchored on land. Behind them where the parking lot is now was once Tiburon Lagoon, and just over the hill and down the road from the arks was the location of the bridge.

The Pacific Inter-Club Yacht Association (PICYA), formed in San Francisco in 1896, united local celebrations, including Tiburon’s, into a sail called a “Cruise in Squadron” in 1917. This became Opening Day and is still organized by the PICYA. In 1963, a “Blessing of the Fleet,” based on a tradition of blessing fishing boats that dates from at least medieval times, was added specifically for recreational boats under the auspices of Tiburon’s Corinthian Yacht Club.

Should you wish to participate, the Blessing of the Fleet occurs this year on April 28 beginning at 1030 near the Corinthian. You’ll see a line of boats forming near the east end of Raccoon Strait. Proceed under power and join in. If you want to be in the parade of boats along the CityFront, here is all the info you need plus how to register.

If you wish to watch it but not participate, please observe the restricted area maintained by the Coast Guard.

I’d like to add some more personal, subjective points to Don’s excellent recent article about our local sailing conditions, that make San Francisco Bay the world’s most desirable place to sail.

1) Let’s compare it to some other great sailing venues in the world. The Mediterranean? Wonderful, historic harbors, but believe it or not, you can just fly to them. It lives up to its reputation of having no wind or too much, and also expensive fees. Polynesia or the Caribbean? Just as beautiful as you’d think; but how about those tropical storms, hurricanes, and cyclones? (These are the same thing as hurricanes–don’t be fooled!)

2) In summer, when the wind is controlled by the microclimate caused by the reliable thermal low in the Central Valley, you can pick your conditions: Want to rock and roll? Sail the slot. Want a mellow pleasure cruise on the same day? Then visit the Oakland Estuary. Want a warm, relaxed weekend to lounge around, swim, and play with water toys? Try the Delta.

3) The wider San Francisco Estuary is gigantic, larger than any similarly protected waters in the world. According to the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, “The Bay’s shoreline is approximately half the length of the California coastline.  The Bay is approximately 550 square miles, which is larger than all but nine cities in the United States. It is almost 20% larger than the City of Los Angeles and is larger than the combined sizes of San Diego and San Jose.” All of this features protected waters that will never, ever, see 20-foot swells.

4) The geography is spectacular, unlike the Chesapeake, and festooned by one of the most beautiful landmarks in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge.

5) San Francisco is one of the world’s great cities, with restaurants that will satisfy the tastes of the most sophisticated gourmets.

6) We have an amazing bunch of local sailors, many of them world champions, to push the envelope and set the bar for the rest of us.

7) Our local sailing rag, Latitude 38, was interactive before interactive was a thing. There is no other sailing periodical like it. A huge amount of the writing is not by professionals but by ordinary sailors in the letters, changes in latitudes, and world of chartering sections.

8) We boast a long and storied nautical history, beginning with Juan Manuel de Ayala y Aranza, and featuring such notables as Richard Henry Dana and Jack London.

9) It has been the nexus of many controversies over its use, and has therefore been, and continues to be, the beneficiary of passionate campaigns by regular citizens to conserve its natural beauty and wildlife.

10) The fog and cold summer breezes are what make it possible for us commoners to sail on the Bay. If we had balmy weather like they do in the Caribbean together with all the blessings listed above, the slips would be enlarged for mega-yachts and the berth fees would be for millionaires only. The chill keeps out the riff-raff; you have to have a bit of a tough hide to sail here.

11) We have the Tradewinds Sailing School and Club.

If you have been certified through Basic Coastal Cruising, you will have learned how to properly connect mooring lines to the buoys at Ayala Cove, named after Juan Manuel de Ayala y Aranza, the first captain ever to sail into San Francisco Bay. But our favorite Cove has been shoaling up just like the rest of the Bay since sea levels rose when the great ice sheets retreated 10,000 years ago. Now I’m not quite that old, but old enough so that observable geological changes have taken place during my tenure. Years ago, when I first hiked out to Arch Rock at the end of the Bear Valley Trail in the Point Reyes Seashore, there was a massive rock arch there, and there was no problem with the depths at Ayala Cove. Now the arch is gone, and we have to pay attention to the tides when visiting Angel Island. I’ve changed a bit myself.

San Francisco Bay is an estuary at the end of the Sacramento River, which carries sediment all the way from the Sierra. As a matter of fact, the sediment is the Sierra. Some of that sediment makes it out the Gate and creates the Four Fathom Bank, but a huge amount is left on the floor of the Bay. If you look at Raccoon Strait on the chart, you’ll see it is very deep, and that is because until the end of the last ice age, when the ice melted and sea level rose over 300 feet, it was a ravine that carried the Sacramento out through the Golden Gate and 25 miles west to the coast, the ancient shore of the Pacific Ocean. This ravine, now filled with water, continues to be scoured by every ebb and flood as does the Golden Gate, and for this reason they have not silted up.

Below is a bathymetric image of the topography of the bottom of Raccoon Strait looking towards the Golden Gate. Notice: 1) How deep the Strait is relative to Ayala Cove. The fact that it is a cove, or indentation in the hills, has meant that over the centuries, it created an eddy where water slowed and dropped its sediment, resulting in a beach. As the ocean rose following the melting of the glaciers, the beach rose with it. The same is true of Keil Cove across from Ayala Cove, the bight between Point Ione and Point Stuart, Richardson Bay, and Belvedere Cove. If the water were to be drained from the Strait, the areas in light blue on the nautical chart above would be flat ledges next to a steep, daunting cliff descending to a cavernous gorge. This sedimentation process continues today, which is why we need to be vigilant when sailing there. 2) The big hump on the bottom just westward of Ayala Cove and opposite Tiburon creates the riffles in the water that you will always encounter there in a strong current, as the rapidly flowing water rises to clear it. 3) The deep holes off of Point Stuart and Peninsula Point are caused by the flow of the current rushing around the points through this constriction, just like the rapids on a river. In a strong current, you will notice turbulence near both the western and eastern approaches to the strait.

Together, these features dramatically illustrate the power of water to shape land. They also reveal an entirely different sense of the roiling flow that lies hidden below the two-dimensional current that we see on the surface. Our marine mammal friends spend their time in this very different world. Similar sculpting takes place anywhere there’s a strong current meeting a constriction or obstruction, like around Alcatraz and of course through the Gate. It’s a ghostly, powerful world down there.

Back to the practical matter of shoaling at Ayala Cove: If you are staying overnight and the boat settles on the bottom in the evening, it won’t hurt the boat, although it may spill your tea as the boat heels. But you’ll have to plan your arrival and departure so that you can get in and out. Of course, you can look the tides up online, using the tidal corrections for either Angel Island (west side), or Angel Island, East Garrison. This will show you a beautiful sine wave. But suppose you don’t have an Internet connection. Here’s a method to figure the slope of the rise and fall of the tide for Ayala Cove, which will also be of service at Sam’s, Clipper Cove, Richardson Bay, and any time and anywhere you have only a tide book:

1. Find the tides at the Golden Gate in your book.
2. Apply the correction for Angel Island (west side), which will work for Ayala Cove:
Time High water +13; Low water +21
Height High water -0.2; Low water 0.0
3. Use the Rule of Twelfths in the paragraph below. This is a way to create a sine curve for the rise and fall of the tide without having a graphing calculator. It allows you to interpolate between the high and low tide to determine when there is enough water for your boat to enter without grounding.

There are about six hours between low and high tide. Divide the total difference in height between them by 12. In the first hour the height increases by 1/12. Then in the second hour by 2/12, in the third by 3/12, in the fourth by 3/12, fifth by 2/12, and the sixth hour, 1/12. These together will add up to the tidal difference. To go from high to low, do the same thing in reverse, subtracting instead of adding.

Just put that steep cliff, close by out towards the Strait, out of your mind.

We sailors like our “A-” words. They sound salty. The prefix comes from Greek and means “on,” “at,” “or in the state of.” I’m going to assume you know ahoy and ahead and astern and a-lee and aboard and abeam and ashore and aground, but we can list a whole sailbag full of other ones:

A-weather: Towards the wind, just as a-lee means away from the wind.

A-hull: Sometimes in a storm we may douse all sail and lash the helm to leeward. This is called lying a-hull. Similar to “under bare poles.” It’s a very clever storm tactic when your brains are too bashed in to think of anything else, but what’s even more clever is not to be in that storm.

A-try: Similar to ­a-hull or hove-to. The objective is to get the boat, by whatever sail configuration achieves it, to lie with her bow about six points (67.5 degrees) off the wind so she doesn’t wallow in the trough and capsize. That would wreck your day.

Athwart/athwartships: Across the boat, perpendicular to the centerline. “The traveler runs athwartships.”

A-peak: When the bow is directly above the anchor, the anchor is a-peak.

A-trip: When the anchor breaks free, it is said to be a-trip.

Aweigh: When the anchor is a-trip and no longer on the bottom, it is aweigh (not “away”).

Aloft: Up the mast. Yes, but did you know that alow means down on deck? That’s where you drop your wrench. Of course, below means belowdecks, but that’s not an A-word, is it?

Adrift: This means floating without steerage, guided just by wind and tide. Also, anything aboard is said to have gone adrift if it has come loose and is preparing to clobber you in the head.

Abroad: Spread, as in “She had all plain sail abroad.”

Abaft: Behind. This is a preposition, a relative term used with a reference point as the object of the preposition, as in “abaft the beam.” Its opposite, less commonly heard, is afore; before is more common. Aft is an adjective or adverb, as in the aft cabin or aft starboard scupper.  

Awash: An object almost submerged is awash. The deck, for example, or a rock or shoal that can just be seen above the water level.

Avast: This is an order meaning to stop some nautical procedure, as in “avast hauling!”or “avast the Metallica!”

Aback: A sail is aback when the wrong side is filled. This occurs when you tack accidentally, which of course would never happen. It can also be done purposefully, as in heaving-to.

A-choo: There is no evidence that this had its origin in seamanship, but no evidence to the contrary, either. Let’s claim it before the golfers or fishermen do.

A-main: All of a sudden. “The squall hit us a-main.”

A-hoo: I don’t know where I got this but I didn’t make it up. It’s obscure, but distressingly often, I find it useful. It means “messy,” “disorganized,” or “all screwed up.” “After the gale passed, the deck gear was all ahoo.”

Aloof: Yes, this has a nautical origin. In sailing, it originally meant keeping your luff as close to the wind as possible—a-luff—and in particular, was used when failing to point high enough would put you on a lee shore.

From Tradewinds Member Al Z.

Hope all is well with you all at Tradewinds. I just had a detailed and extremely informative chat with Nick by phone who very kindly suggested I write you, Matt, in case you wish to post this in a Newsletter to members. I’ve taken your wonderful 101, 103 and 104 courses and enjoyed them immensely.

In short, I wanna relay a strong recommendation to all sailors on the Bay to get a life jacket that has both crotch straps and a spray hood – the latter of which doesn’t come standard on any PFD sold at West Marine but one can be purchased from spinlock. Here’s why:

On Saturday I was sailing on a boat I’ve been racing on several times, a J125 out of Brickyard Cove Richmond, in high winds, reaching 25 knots. We were heading downwind when we raised the spinnaker and all seemed well (despite  other boats in the race calling it quits due to the gusts). Then there was a super sudden bluster that came so fast there was no time to let out a sheet. I was on the main sheet and only had time to kick free the traveler before I was flying. And the skipper has said in hindsight, even if we had let the main out and made  other adjustment in a non-second, it wouldn’t have offset the force of wind that pitched us on our side. It came like a fire cracker.

The racing boat pitched sideways, bodies were air-born and I was MOB. After being under the boat, I surfaced with my Mustang 70 inflated and thought all would be fine. Surprisingly, I wasn’t feeling very cold at all and was floating on the water. But I was taking in a stomach full of sea water every 10 seconds from the swells and spray, so by just ten minutes I had probably 60 stomach-fulls and was starting to weaken. No matter which way I turned or covered my mouth with my hand, I was getting hit. It took the crew over 28 minutes to get me after failed passes in the rough conditions and I didn’t think I was gonna make it in part because I didn’t have a splash hood attached to my Mustang PFD to stop the swells from hitting me. With that hood, I could’ve been fine and waiting, I think, for hours.

My PFD did an okay job keeping me afloat but it couldn’t block the heavy spray even with my hand covering my mouth. Once my crew finally got me, three sets of hands holding me sideways off the side of the boat, they couldn’t hoist me up initially due to my weight while wet and the force of water tugging at the submerged half of me. So, I was taking in white water in the face, starting to drown in a horizontal position. Eventually, of course, they pulled me aboard. But there were many lessons here. 

First, you gotta get a life jacket with a spray hood and crotch straps that keep your PFD from rising so your head can stay high. Second, your crew needs to practice how to slow a boat in windy conditions to pull a MOB back on deck because it’s incredibly hard to do this quickly and it’s a critical element in the rescue procedure. Happy sailing and be safe!

Best regards,

Al Z.