MOB Recovery: A true story

Nikki Henderson shares her real-life rescue of a crew member when they fell overboard. Here an excerpt:

The south coast of Antigua only has a few outlying rocks that posed a danger to us. One of them I’m slightly too familiar with. Over a decade ago when racing in Antigua Sailing Week, we hit it straight on the nose at 7 knots. So, as the water turned from a deep blue to a turquoise, I wasn’t in the mood to cut it too fine.

“Tacking in 3, 2, 1 and tacking!” I called to the crew. Three of them were already poised and ready in the cockpit early as we didn’t want to take any chances. I could swing the boat into the tack pretty quickly.

All went smoothly and were heading off on a port tack fine tuning the trim. I saw one of the crew pointing. And then I heard it – it must have been the second or third time it had been called:

“MAN OVERBOARD!”

Well, it wasn’t a man in fact. But, one of our fearless bow team. – Full report