Single Handed & Tiller Pilot

[Neil Gordon]

And I'll have it mix me a Margarita for when I get back on the boat.

I was thinking with all the gizmos you suggested, that you use the windlass, automatically set up, of course, to haul your safety line and you back on board. A small attachment on top of the windlass could surely be rigged as a blender type appliance so you'd have your drink as soon as you were on the foredeck.

[Boyd]

Thirty years ago during a trip back from Miami on a Mariner 38, the the seas were almost dead calm, the wind was nill and the water gorgeous, so we all decided to go swimming in the Gulf Stream.

Between the 4 of us we had enough common sense to leave one person on the boat at all times and trail a 50' line behind the boat with a bumper on the end.

With almost no wind having just the windage of the bare boat it became apparent that there was no way I could swim fast enough to catch up to the boat if I let go of the safety line. Pulling myself back to the boat hand over hand was a significant task.

For emphasis- this was in almost dead calm conditions barely a whisper of wind. Not enough to hardly fill the sails. We had been motoring at the time.

In simple terms the boat will drift in the wind fast enough with just the windage of the hull to prevent even a strong swimmer from catching up.

Stay on the boat.

Boyd
s/v Tern
CD 30 MkII
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

[Neil Gordon]

Between the 4 of us we had enough common sense to leave one person on the boat at all times ...

That's better than a group of charter sailors did in the Med. They found the boat adrift will all in order. An investigation concluded they stopped for a swim but neglected to put the ladder down before the last person dove in. Oppps.

[Sea Hunt]

With almost no wind having just the windage of the bare boat it became apparent that there was no way I could swim fast enough to catch up to the boat if I let go of the safety line. Pulling myself back to the boat hand over hand was a significant task.

Boyd, thank you for making my point with your real life experience much better than I ever could have done. "30 years ago" would also suggest you were young and "possibly" in better physical conditioning than today (no offense intended).

Admittedly, my experience does NOT come from sailboats. However, the practical considerations of getting back aboard are essentially the same - perhaps even more difficult on a sailboat.

My only suggestion or thought would be not to count or plan on being able to get back to your sailboat and climb back aboard by yourself. That may be "Plan A", but "Plan B" will probably come into play quickly.

[Kemah]

I just tried my new Wichard (Etrier-type) Emergency Boarding Ladder today at the mooring (not much tide, maybe 5 knots of wind). I tried it off the transom and off the side, pretty far aft. I wasn't able to make it work--my legs kept getting swept under the hull. Richard, I'll be interested to hear if you have better luck with the one you've ordered (p. 1 in this thread). Maybe I haven't figured out how to balance with it. Anyone else used one?
Great thread.

[Bob Luby]

Boarding Devices ( and perhaps specifically emergency boarding devices ) should be designed so that a person with limited upper body strength and coordination i.e. Your girlfriend, you exhausted after a long swim, etc, can use their legs to board. The strongest muscles are our gluteii maxiimi. This goes double for our women.

I have it. Netting 4 X4 in. Like the boarding nets used during amphibious troop assaults. Stick a large float on the end, so it doesn't go under the boat. Ladders that go under the boat ( and that includes most rope emergency ladders) require upper body strength..

mmm. Maybe I should experiment.
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[Rollergirl]

http://www.divendog.com/ladderplatform.aspx

Might be easier to just haul yourself onto a submerged platform on the side of the boat to recover and have a place to stand while beginning your accent.
No experience with this item; have been considering it for a winter refit as a swim ladder for the Chris Craft we've bought.

Bill

[Russell]

http://www.divendog.com/ladderplatform.aspx

Might be easier to just haul yourself onto a submerged platform on the side of the boat to recover and have a place to stand while beginning your accent.
No experience with this item; have been considering it for a winter refit as a swim ladder for the Chris Craft we've bought.

Bill

Given the specs, that is shockingly inexpensive. Very cool swim ladder. Rigid ladders though do not lend themselves as well to rapid deployment from in the water.

The problem and discussion of rope style ladders being difficult to use is an old one. When your weight is put on it likes to swing forward under the boat. It ultimately takes a rather fit person with fair strength to use one in the best of conditions. This is a big problem with liferafts, and in tests of liferafts always found to be one of the major issues with them. They tend to have rope boarding ladders, which the average person, without even considering the awful conditions it would be deployed in, has difficulty boarding them in a swimming pool! When I bought my liferaft, I paid another $500 for an optional boarding platform, an inflatible platform that extends out of the liferaft in place of the useless ladder.

I see no reason why such a beast could not be made for boarding a yacht. Some inflatible device that hangs off the stern like your emergency ladder would, with a rip cord you can reach from the water. When pulled, the packed device inflates and drops in the water, lanyarded to the boat. a small square or circle that can sustain your weight, you can climb upon, then into the boat. A mini liferaft of sorts ultimately. But this design of boarding is well proven and a huge advance in liferaft boarding, why not a version for yachts as well?

[Troy Scott]

I believe the best ladder for boarding the boat from the water would be a rigid, folding ladder with a platform well below the water's surface. The rungs should be about three inches wide, not just SS pipe. It should be mounted on the side of the boat, at the center of pitching motion. Rope ladders are fine for kids, who seem to have no problem with them, but for older adults they are floppy and difficult.

Our cars now are smart enough to know when someone is not sitting in one of the seats, so it doesn't waste and airbag or kill a child unnecessarily in an accident. We have in 2008 at our disposal an unbelievable array of well-developed devices like infrared sensors, small radio or wi-fi devices, and many other cheap, effective ways of letting an automated system know where a human body is, as well as when it isn't where it should be. In the 21st century there is just no good reason why a sailboat should sail away from a sailor who for whatever reason is no longer on the boat. The "deadman switch" I mentioned earlier is just a very EARLY example of folks being smart enough to realize the need for such a thing. It is NOT an actual suggestion for a sailboat. It should be possible to design and market something better and cheaper than the Raymarine MOB system, with a user-customizable set of events this system would set in motion. All these ideas of dragging trip lines, or strings tied to this or that, and especially something you'd have to disengage to leave the cockpit are too draggy and/or clumsy. There is no reason to think this "someday-system" would diminish us as sailors. You're still going to have to get your possibly injured self back on the boat, out of the cold, shark infested water, and it's probably NOT going to have hot cocoa waiting for you. But it's just dumb not to use simple but important safety measures. That's how I see this idea: as a utilization of existing simple, cheap things combined in a way that could really help.

The events that should follow a sailor's unintentional exit from the boat are, in my thinking at least:
1. Stop the boat.
2. Deploy helpful floating devices.
3. Deploy the swim ladder.
4. Call for help if necessary.
In short, automatically do the things a crew would do if they saw you fall over the side. Feel free to add to the list!

[Joe Myerson]

Troy,

Several products already exist for powerboats: Skipper and crew wear a transmitter on their PFDs. When they go overboard an alarm sounds, the engine kill switch is thrown and, in the case of the Raymarine product, a MOB mark appears on the navigation screen.

I'm not sure how to modify such a product for sailors, but there's a kernel of an idea there.

--Joe

[Troy Scott]

Joe,

When we're motoring, of course it would be the same. But when we're sailing, it needs to somehow get the boat to heave to. This would require some experimentation, and would probably be a little different for every boat. What about it guys? What would be the minimum number of automated steps required to make your Cape Dory heave to? What exactly are those steps? How can we make it happen?

[John Vigor]

Joe,

When we're motoring, of course it would be the same. But when we're sailing, it needs to somehow get the boat to heave to. This would require some experimentation, and would probably be a little different for every boat. What about it guys? What would be the minimum number of automated steps required to make your Cape Dory heave to? What exactly are those steps? How can we make it happen?

Interesting question, Troy. It would depend on many things:

1. Is the boat being steered by an electric autopilot?
2. Is the boat being steered by a wind vane?
3. Is the boat being steered to windward with a wheel or tiller fixed to counteract weather helm?
4. Is the boat being steered by the singlehander up until the moment he/she goes overboard?

All these circumstances would require different approaches.

The rig would also affect matters. To heave to in the conventional sloop, the boat would need to be put about without touching the jib. This means the tiller (helm) would need to be put down, and as soon as the boat has gone through the eye of the wind, the tiller (helm) would need to be put down and held on the opposite side.

This sounds very complicated for something lacking a human brain.

In my view, there are only two reasonably practical ways to give a person overboard the chance to reboard.

The first is to get all sail to drop, something that might be achieved by a halyard cleat that somehow trips to throw off the line. This is perhaps not applicable to a roller furling headsail, of course.

The second method is to put the helm hard over-- easier for a tiller, perhaps, pre-loaded on one side with the kind of rubber tubing used in underwater spears.

This would make the boat go around in small circles, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but it might give you a chance to catch it up and board it.

For tiller-steered boats under the control of a wind vane, all that is needed is to lift the chain upward off the tiller. I would expect the boat to round up, fall off, jibe and go about continuously, but it's just possible that you might be able to place yourself in its path and cling to the gunwale as it comes past. Not terribly possible, but not totally impossible.

I must say, though, that the more I think about it, the bleaker the prospects become. No one solution is going to fit every boat.

Nevertheless, you never know what a discussion like this will bring up. In shallow water, dropping the anchor from the bow or stern would probably work.

And how about a sort of giant air-bag that explodes to launch a large sea anchor? That might be easier to arrange than almost anything else mentioned so far. At a price, of course.

Cheers,

John Vigor

[Troy Scott]

I believe that if we continue to think about this as a group, we can come up with something sensible.

[Hud Smith]

If you're motoring with an auto pilot, it would be simple to have the boat reverse course 180 degrees, motor for say 45 seconds, then cut the engine. I think any of the auto pilot people can do this. The problem may be insurance liability- if the boat were to run over the MOB and keel haul him.
If you were under sail, and single handing, the MOB alarm would have to be linked to a programmable logic controller- fancy name for a sequencer. A logic controller receives an input signal, in this case an MOB alarm, and performs a series of operations. These operations- actually electrical outputs- are timed with a hand held programmer or a laptop, so operations 2 thru 5 can be delayed
for a desired time.
These outputs go to a relay panel and the relays are used to open/close valves, start motors, etc.
Maybe if you're under sail you could deploy a sea anchor off the side of the bow, and the drag would bring the boat into the wind.
Of course if you dock your boat and walk away with the transmitter in your pocket your sea anchor may go through the neighbors hull.
A logic controller for this would be smaller than a coffee can and cost about $500.

[Troy Scott]

Hud,

There must be ways to make such a system more foolproof. My computer annoys me by always asking me "are you SURE....?". The sea anchor and halyard release sound good. It should be fairly easy to build shackles that could electrically release halyards and sheets, all at once, while launching a sea anchor, some other light lines in several directions, a life-bouy, the swim ladder, etc., and there must be a way to keep this from happening in your slip.

John Vigor's idea that would make the boat sail small, slow circles is also a step in the right direction. What would be the simplest way to get the boat to actually heave-to?