It’s not what you say, but what you do

When you lose a crew into the water, what do you shout? The Man Overboard (MOB) hail has gotten snared by a shift in sensitivity, as man now explicitly refers only to males. And while it’s not the moment to overthink things, the current terminology is Person-in-Water (PIW) or Crew Overboard (COB) Rescue. Steve Schupak recalls an incident before the shift:

It’s interesting how the Politically Correct police has inserted vernacular into the most important activity a sailor can do – the preservation of life when a crew goes outside the boat. I can only hope the Coast Guard and others are taking this with a grain of salt against the severity of the situation and the fulfillment of duty.

Quite a few years ago, I was on a large boat with a crew of seven and a spindly aluminum rig (read: fragile). We were in Hawaii for a delivery to California in less than placid conditions with 18-25 knots in the harbor, 25-55 knots once we cleared the end of the island, and 20+ foot seas. Nasty!

At our crew meeting before docking out, we went over safety procedures if we were to fall into the water: toss the horseshoe buoy in daylight and pull the MOM pack in darkness (an acronym for Man Overboard Module… will that change too?). Great…we were set.

A couple of hours later, while pounding upwind motor sailing, we looked alongside the boat and saw one of our crew in the water. This was a puckery “OH SH#@$T” moment…”MAN OVERBOARD!!!”. The crew went into action – one tossed the horseshoe buoy (as it was noon), two people were spotters, and one punched the GPS. All according to plan.

The other instruction we got in the harbor was don’t drop the rig, and as we had up a double reefed delivery main, we needed a couple of people back in the cockpit on the mainsheet and running backs before we could turn for retrieval.

Amid the big seas, by the time we finally did safely turn the boat, I asked the two spotters where our crewmate went…”well, he was back over there a little while ago…” In the 30-40 seconds since going overboard and being ready to turn, we got out of phase with the waves and lost direct sight of him.

I’m in another O.S. situation which has an even stronger pucker factor. Luckily the water was 78° F, so hypothermia wasn’t a factor, but we were out in the deep end and the next landfall would have been Japan. Also, as we had been motor sailing upwind at less than 6 knots, now we were doing over 14 with just a delivery main! How am I to slow this thing down?

I’m getting a bit anxious for the spotters to find our crewmate, and after what seemed to be an eternity, he was spotted and we were able to come along side and drag him up over the cutout transom with brute force.

As I think back to this memory forever etched in my mind, my advice is to not worry about any of the words you use in a crisis, be calm (as possible), direct, and revert to your game plan. Don’t worry about not doing something exactly according to a perceived rule, but rather get your crew mate back aboard as quickly and safely as you can.