Suddenly Overboard
Read Suddenly Overboard Online
Authors: Tom Lochhaas
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D
EDICATED TO
all sailors everywhereâmay we
never experience the misadventures
of those in these narrativesâand
to the courageous women and men
in rescue services around the world
who work to save those who do
.
Note on Imperial vs. Metric Units
C
HAPTER
1 |
The Storms We All Fear
C
HAPTER
2 |
Some Incidents Can't Be Prevented?
C
HAPTER
3 |
A Good Day's Sail Goes Bad
C
HAPTER
4 |
Anchoring, Docking, Dinghying
C
HAPTER
6 |
Engine or Equipment Failure
Three Generations Sailing off Puffin Island
C
HAPTER
8 |
No Way to Call for Help
C
HAPTER
9 |
A Thousand Ways to End Up in the Water
C
HAPTER
10 |
The Perils of Solo Sailing
C
HAPTER
11 |
Can Your Crew Save You?
C
HAPTER
12 |
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Appendix | Interview with Gary Jobson, President of U.S. Sailing
T
wenty years ago I almost became a statistic. Although I'd sailed for a decade, had taken a boating safety course, and always took precautions like putting on my PFD (personal flotation device) when the wind or waves got up, I made one of those dumb mistakes everyone makes from time to timeâif you're human. I can't imagine a stupider way to die.
It was a calm, beautiful day at the end of the season, and we were returning to the dock after a pleasant afternoon sail when it happened. At the time I was mostly just embarrassed. Afterward, with self-deprecating irony, I told it as a funny story. Years later, I learned it's one of the more common ways that sailors die on the water. Who'd have thought?
I kind of doubt my wife or daughter would've told it as a funny story if it had ended as so many real stories do.
In early October the waters of the Atlantic Ocean off New Englandânever warmâhad already grown colder still. My friend Dan and I wore light jackets and jeans and socks under boat shoes, but the sun was warm and bright. My home port is a river harbor, just upstream from open ocean, and the tidal current can run 3 to 4 knots at half tide. We were used to that, of course, and factored it into our navigation. Trickier were the unpredictable eddies and side currents nearer shore and among the floating docks where I had a slip that summer for my 26-foot sloop. Still, not
that
tricky, and I was very accustomed to docking by myself after singlehanded sailing. With crew, a piece of cake! Something I didn't even have to think about anymore.
Not thinking was my first mistake.
It was easy to motor into the slip slowly against the current, as I had so often before. Dan stepped off the port side with the bow line and walked forward to a cleat. I casually moved up to the
port rail and stepped off with a stern lineâand inexplicably found myself in the water.
I don't even remember how it happened. Later, Dan told me I'd been looking at him and pointing at which dock cleat to use when an eddy kicked the stern to starboard. I must have looked hilarious as I simply stepped over the rail and into the water.
I was right there beside the floating dock and easily held on, but damn was it cold! Fortunately the eddy kept the boat a few feet behind me rather than crushing me against the dock, but I wasn't thinking about the boat just then. I was wondering why in the world I couldn't pull myself up onto the dock. I grasped a cleat at the edge, but I had no leverage and couldn't brace my feet or legs against anything to climb up. The current swept my legs out at an angle, and already I was starting to shake with cold.
Dan cleated off the bow line, decided not to worry about keeping the boat from banging into the one to starboard, and came back to see if I needed a hand. When he saw I was apparently okay, he finally laughed. He grabbed one of my hands to help me out, but I was 200 pounds of dead weight, heavier still with my waterlogged clothes, and he's a smaller guy. With a heave he yanked me high enough that I should have been able to hook a knee up on the float . . . but my legs seemed to have stopped working.
At this point in the story I usually let go with a string of epithets. In reality, I doubt I said much; the research shows panicking people, like those drowning, seldom actually call out for help, much less curse.
So there we were, me still wondering why I wasn't yet out of the water, Dan no doubt wondering that tooâjust climb out for God's sake! He still held one of my arms, but I couldn't feel the cleat anymore that my other hand clutched. My thinking was getting muddled and I considered letting go and letting the current drift me downstream where I was sure I'd bang up against the next dock where surely there was a ladder. Or whatever.
Maybe Dan saw the confusion in my eyes, or maybe he imagined having to tell my wife how he'd been unable to pull me out
and could only watch helplessly as I slipped and went under, but abruptly he grabbed my other hand, locked tight on both wrists, crouched down, and with a mighty heave swung his weight backward and scraped my chest up onto the float like landing a giant fish that has died on the hook.