Man overboard: roles, drill and the night version

The difference between a recovery and a fatality is usually decided in the first thirty seconds, by people who have never practised. Allocating jobs by name before you leave costs an hour alongside and removes almost all of the hesitation.

Allocate the jobs by name

"Whoever is nearest" is not a plan. Every crew member should know their own job in one sentence, and be able to say it back to you before departure. On a crew of six or eight the allocation below works; with four, one person doubles up on gear and communications.

A drill worth running

Do it on passage day one, in daylight, with a fender and a bucket, and do it twice — once with the skipper running it and once with the skipper as the casualty. The second version is the one that finds the gaps, because the crew discover they were all waiting for instructions from somebody who is now in the water.

Time it. Note who did what. Then change the allocation if it did not work rather than telling everybody to try harder.

What changes at night

Almost everything. The pointer becomes nearly useless without a light, so the danbuoy light, a floating strobe and a hand-held spotlight matter more than technique. Lifejacket lights must be tested at the start of the passage, not assumed, and every crew member should carry a personal AIS beacon if the budget reaches — at night it is the difference between searching an area and steering to a position.

This is why the rota matters: a single-handed night watch means nobody sees the person go, and the alarm is the empty cockpit at the next handover. If you sail short-handed at night, tethers stop being advisory. See watch systems and standing orders.

Prevention, which is the real answer

Jacklines that reach the foredeck, two-hook tethers clipped before leaving the companionway after dark, a rule about going forward alone, and a heads routine that does not involve unclipping unsupervised. None of it is heroic and all of it works better than recovery.

The first thirty seconds

Everything that matters happens before anybody has had a chance to think. Shout "man overboard" so the whole boat hears it, throw flotation immediately even if it lands nowhere near them, hit the MOB button on the plotter, and get one person doing nothing but pointing. In that order, and all of it inside half a minute.

The most common failure is not a bad recovery technique. It is that nobody threw anything, nobody marked the position, and within ninety seconds four people are looking at four different patches of water.

Choosing a recovery method beforehand

Decide which turn your boat uses and practise that one, rather than knowing three in theory. A quick-stop keeps you close and is usually right with a full crew and an engine that starts. A crash gybe or a Williamson turn has its place in poor visibility or at night, when a known-heading manoeuvre is worth more than staying visually close.

Whatever you pick, the recovery — getting a person who may be unconscious, cold, and wearing forty kilos of wet clothing up a metre and a half of freeboard — is the part crews have almost never practised. A halyard, a strop and a winch is a plan. Hands are not.

The kit that earns its place

Afterwards

Somebody recovered from the sea is a casualty even if they are talking. Cold shock, secondary drowning and hypothermia all present late, so the person goes below, gets dry, gets warm slowly and gets watched — and you consider whether to divert regardless of how well they seem.

Log everything with times while it is fresh: when they went in, when you turned, when you had them alongside, when they were aboard. If a rescue coordination centre becomes involved, that timeline is the first thing they ask for, and nobody remembers it accurately an hour later.

Questions skippers ask