Lessons Learned

Finally I thought I'd better contribute to this blog, as everyone else has.

Well, I'll start with a valuable lesson I/we learned the hard way; M.O.B- Man Over Board, in our case, me.

We were nicely moored in a tranquil setting in a nook called; 'The Hole in the Wall' in Jervis Bay, NSW, on a warm, calm day. We had the swim deck down, an inflatable canoe in the water, I had a life jacket on and we were about 100m from shore. What could go wrong? Well, I noticed that a tube hadn't been inflated on the canoe I had been using all morning, so I inflated it and went to get in the canoe from the swim deck, to give it a stability test. The canoe instantly capsized dumping me in the water, head first. The cold water shock made me draw water into my lungs, and I popped up coughing madly gasping for air. I grabbed the swim deck and then realised that it was a good 30cm above the water level with no chance of me being able to pull myself out. Even though I only had shorts and a t-shirt on, with my life jacket, the saturated weight was dragging me under. The kids and my mate, Tom, quickly got the ladder, which came with the boat, and what we thought was for the boat, and deployed it on the swim deck for me to climb back in....it collapsed and was useless. Natalie stabilised the canoe and got me to try and get in it. I launched myself, in desperation, into the canoe, only to shoot over it and went head first back into the water. I was exhausted and clung to the swim deck. Jacob went to get his mum, who thought it was a joke and stayed downstairs. Natalie was telling me to inflate my jacket, but I knew it would be impossible to get back in the boat once inflated, and Tom said we had a final chance of rescues before I pulled the jacket and swam ashore. Tom readied himself like a sumo wrestler and we grabbed each other's wrists and on three, I kicked like there was no tomorrow and Tom pulled. I was landed like fish and spent the next ten minutes gasping for air and coughing up sea water. If we were under way, then I wouldn't be here.

So a simple mistake nearly ended in tragedy. It must never happen again, so we took the following steps, and thanks to Scott Lanyon for his recommendations too:

1. Everyone wears a life jacket before the swim deck goes down

2. The Zodiac is in the water as soon as the swim deck is down

3. We purchased a solid, SS ladder, which was fitted by a great guy; Roger from Opportunity and to whom, we will be permanently indebted. This is placed in position.

4. Whenever any crew says someone's in the water, it is TAKEN SERIOUSLY AND ALL HANDS ON DECK......No crying; "Wolf!"

5. Thanks to Scott, we have identified that our spinnaker halyard is our longest rope, and that will be deployed to attach to the life jacket of anyone in the water and a winch is to be used to retrieve the unfortunate into the boat, however unceremoniously.

6. The 'horseshoe collar' will be thrown to the casualty instantly.

7. Regular drills will be carried out.

This is a difficult introduction, but a very serious one to address, and please feel free to comment. I could not believe how ill prepared I was, and how difficult things become so quickly, and how exhausted I became in such a short time.

We will not repeat this accident!