Motor Boat & Yachting - January 2016 UK

COLUMNS

JANUARY 2016 29

DAVE MARSH: It’s fi ne for there to be varying notions of what constitutes safety on board

depending on the situation, just as long as there is – at the very least – a notion of safety

L

ast month, one of our readers,

Steve Walker, admonished me

for not wearing the crotch

strap on the lifejacket that I’d

trialled for our Tried & Tested

pages. And he was quite right

to do so. Although in certain

circumstances a case can be

made for or against wearing a lifejacket at all,

if you are going to wear one, then the crotch

strap is essential to its effective workings. If

you remain unconvinced, just watch this

startling RNLI video (bit.ly/1iAoWeu). Anyway,

Steve’s censure made me revisit notions of

safety afloat. All told, it’s a complex and not

altogether logical mix of personal experience

and a subjective sense of how safe and secure

we feel when we’re afloat in any given situation.

Dinghy sailing in the 70s formed my

introduction to boating, and if you’ve heard of

the International Moth class, you’ll know how

unstable they are. Later, racing around the

Solent in the 80s, nobody I sailed with (at

least inshore) wore a lifejacket because of the

fear that it would snag on something. So my

personal bias has been informed by the

(embarrassingly regular) necessity to swim

easily back to the boat, the need to stay warm

while I dried out, and a vague snagging

phobia. This probably explains my enduring

inclination to wear my svelte fleece-lined

buoyancy aid rather than a lifejacket, unless

I’m heading offshore or boating single-handed.

There again, many people go pleasure boating

on bigger boats unencumbered by any form

of buoyancy aid or lifejacket.

I’m not suggesting that any of these

tactics: buoyancy aid, lifejacket, survival suit,

or nothing at all, is either right or wrong –

personal experience aside, what you choose

will depend on the circumstances (night or

day, cold or warm, inshore or offshore), your

talent as a swimmer, the chances of falling

overboard in either a conscious or

unconscious state, and the ability of the

mothership and its crew to successfully get

you back on board in a sensible timescale.

However, I am convinced that this latter point

is pondered least of all.

TESTING

TIMES

I’m not suggesting that any of these

tactics: buoyancy aid, lifejacket,

survival suit, or nothing at all,

is either right or wrong

One Health & Safety Executive study I read

made for sober reading. On a typical British

spring day – water at 13ºC and a pleasantly

breezy F3 to F4 – a ‘standard man’ wearing

normal clothing and a lifejacket ‘is likely to

succumb to drowning’ in less than half an hour.

That timescale drops sharply if it’s windier and

colder. And those figures assume that the

victim has survived Cold Shock, the

mechanism that can decrease breath-hold

time to less than ten seconds and increase a

person’s breathing rate by a startling ten-fold.

Unsurprisingly, Cold Shock is the main fear

below 10ºC. More surprising is that some will

experience it at double that temperature.

So when it comes to survival, getting an

MOB back on board pronto is as much an

issue as anything else. As powerboaters we’re

inordinately lucky here; hauling somebody

over the helpfully rounded tubes on a RIB is

far easier than tackling even the lowest of

sailing boat topsides, and hi-lo bathing

platforms are one of the most significant

MOB safety features we benefit from,

assuming your boat has such a thing. If not

though, have you ever tried climbing back

on board using the typically petite safety

ladders that can be deployed by a swimmer?

Doubtless some boaters do carry a device

for rescuing MOB and have thoroughly

thought through the process of how a

fatigued body might be winched or hauled

back on board. But I’ve only met one so far.

Although I often feel safe enough to

dispense with a lifejacket, I get twitchy if I

lose sight of my waterproof hand-held VHF

and an intense flashing safety light. I know

the waterproof VHF would have little range

at sea level, but it makes me feel safer.

Regardless, whatever your particular safety

regime, I’d like to think that we’ll continue to

be allowed to make our own decisions about

what to wear and when to use it (and no, I

didn’t mean the crotch strap Steve!).

Finding a lifejacket to

coordinate with a bikini can be

tricky, but I assure you she’s

been fully safety briefed