| Man Over Board | First Aid |
| Liferaft | Signaling/Flares |
| EPIRB | Water |
| Power | Harnesses/Jacklines |
The best strategy in for man overboard situations is practice. We still need more practice, particularly offshore.
We have several pieces of equipment to assist in a man overboard situation. all of this equipment was purchased at West Marine.
The Lifesling is a floating harness attached to a 50' line secured to the boat. It is kept in a box mounted to the stern rail. It is thrown out when you are approaching the crew member in the water and drawn to the swimmer like you would a ski rope to a water-skier. It requires that the victim is conscious but it is a big help getting the person along side in rough conditions. It is also useful for bringing the victim onboard by attaching the line to a halyard and winching the victim up over the lifelines.
M.O.B. Pole is designed to be released quickly after you splash your crew member. Its purpose is to provide visibility to the location of the victim. it is a long fiberglass pole with a flag on top, a float toward the bottom and a weight on the bottom to keep it upright. It attaches to the backstay so it ready to toss over quickly. These are often attached to a horseshoe float but we passed on it because we will always wear our inflating PFD harnesses while on deck.
M.O.B. return features are available on our GPS and on our Nexus instruments. Nexus adds an interesting twist because of the integration of information available in the server. The Nexus server has your compass course from its fluxgate compass and boat speed from the knot log plus you speed over ground and course over ground from the interfaced GPS. From this it calculates the set and drift of the current. When you press the M.O.B. alarm it takes the present position from the GPS and begins to apply the set and drift of the current to update the location of the victim based on their expected movement in the water. A 2 knot current can carry a victim over 60 yards a minute so this is a good feature.
We could have bought an alarm which sounds inside the boat when a transmitter on the deck hand hits the salt water. This sounded good and it was under $1,000 but you need to draw the line somewhere. We plan to call the our mate on deck before we leave the cockpit in rough conditions and be connected to the jackline on deck whenever we are alone. Hopefully we won't get lazy or overconfident on these points.
We purchased a Medical Sea-Pak - Coastal model for the trip. We liked it because it was organized into compartments by type of medical problem. The manual is organized the same way and very easy to follow in a crisis. They make an offshore version but it has few things not included in the coastal but larger quantities for a larger crew.
We went through it with our doctor and he added some prescription medication for treatments we might need. The manual actually recommends prescription additions and specifies how to organize them in the kit.
We will have an everyday first-aid kit also for normal ailments and keep the Sea-Pak for emergencies.
We purchased a Winslow liferaft at Sail Expo West '97. They offered a very attractive discount at the show. We went with Winslow because they are very light and compact. Because of small size we choose a valise pack which means that it is in a bag kept below deck rather than in a canister on deck. This keeps it in a less hostile environment and makes it last longer but it will not deploy automatically so we risk failing to deploy it in a catastrophic collision.
Our first line of defense in making our presence known is our radar reflector. We have a Mobri radar reflector mounted on our upper shroud just above the spreader. The Mobri has gotten some bad press from West Marine and Practical Sailor. Both are responsible testers but our experience is that we show up extremely well on small boat and ship radar. We have the 4 inch diameter model. We felt the Mobri was better constructed than other reflectors so it would keep its good performance longer and as it is up in the rigging it is something you forget about easily. We highly recommend the Mobri.
We purchased 4 Pains/Wessex parachute flares and 5 Orion 25mm parachute flares. The split was due to the 2 different purposes we have for these flares. As typical Americans we would like to carry a gun onboard. Due to the complete lack of understanding on this point in most of the world we have decided that we will not carry a gun. The Pains/Wessex flares go higher, burn longer and brighter but they are launched from a handheld tube and are difficult to aim. The Orion flares are shot from a 25mm pistol flare gun and are easier to aim so they represent a form of defense. I am not sure that either one of us could actually fire at another person but it is hard to say what we would do in certain situations and this configuration at least gives us options. We also have 6 25mm meteor flares and 2 smoke canisters. The raft contains some additional flares and our abandon ship bag holds 3 of the Pains/Wessex parachute flares.
We have manually deployed 406 MHz EPIRB in our abandon ship bag. An EPIRB signals to orbiting satellites that you are in need of rescue. It signals with a code which you must register or the authorities will not know who you are. You should provide a reliable land contact that can confirm your approximate location so the authorities can authenticate the emergency. These things have really improved rescue at sea and are a definite requirement on any boat venturing out of sight of land. We keep ours in our abandon ship bag.
We have 10 gallons of emergency water and we have a Pur Powersurvivor 06 hand operated watermaker. It can in theory produce 6 gallons a day if operated continuously but can easily produce 1/2 gallon a day. Our Pur Powersurvivor 40 has a hand operated capability but this does not seem very practical for our purposes.
We have a small gas powered generator to charge the batteries if we lose normal charging capabilities. We would shutdown the refrigeration and use power for just navigation, autopilot and communications.
We have West Marine auto-inflating PFD harnesses which we wear when on deck. We have 1" nylon strap jacklines to run on each side of the boat from bow to stern. We use 6' tethers to connect the harnesses to the jacklines. This setup would have in the water if we slip but we will be with the boat. A spare halyard can be hooked to the harness and the victim can be winched aboard. We plan to practice this but not until we reach warmer water.