MOB Recovery – Practise Day Saturday 4th February

A person (or man) over board can be a frightening experience. Within our club sailing setting, the most important thing to do is to summon the assistance of one of the Safety Boats immediately.  It’s always a lot easier to recover a person into a powerboat than a sailing boat, and as such we would ideally do it in this manner. Here’s what to do, written from the point of view of the skipper, who is ultimately in charge in this situation.

1. Alert Crew, Assign Roles

Alert the crew to the MOB situation.

Assign one crew member to continuously watch where the MOB is, remembering that all you can see of them will be their head, and waves may be higher than this. The crew member should point at them/the last location they saw them to give the skipper a quick reference point to where they are.

Assign a crew member to make contact with one of the safety boats via radio – it is acceptable to transmit over other INSS staff using our channel, and indeed to make it clear straight away why you’re calling.

2. Begin Recovery Procedure

It’s advisable to reduce sail area and slow each manoeuvre down more than normal to ensure that you don’t lose anyone else.

3. Recover Casualty on Windward side of 1720/squib/dinghy.

You should be stopped, lying to, beside the MOB. There’s no dignified re-entry method – and in this situation, the only the result counts. Get them in however you can!

Practise on Saturday 4th February...

We’ll have some MOB dummies made up and these will be distributed among the keelboats. The club safety boats will have MOB dummies for dinghy sailors wishing to practise the manoeuvre. We’ll start this as soon as the boats have launched, and will do it within the harbour. As we’ll also be racing, there may not be time for all crew to attempt the manoeuvre on the helm, so we’ll also practise again on Saturday the 11th. There will be a short briefing before and de-briefing afterwards.

Now a video of the manoeuvre…

This video from the RYA demonstrates the manoeuvre. Although it’s from a dinghy, the technique is the same for a keelboat such as a squib or 1720.

And something slightly different…

While not a MOB situation, this video does give an insight into what a distress situation at sea can be like. It’s not the shortest video in the world, just a warning!