Suddenly Overboard (2 page)

I just lay there shaking while he jerked me farther up a couple inches at a time. Eventually he grabbed my jeans above the knee and pulled my leg up on the float while I, somewhat mystified, noted that the heavy wet thing lying there was part of me.

I don't remember much about how he got the boat tied up and walked me to the car and got the heater running on high. I just remember being really cold and looking down at my numb hands that felt like blocks of wood attached to my arms. I have to be honest here: as scared as I should've been, I don't think it occurred to me that I actually—really, truly—could have died in such a dumb way. I know that because, even with the benefit of that experience, I didn't immediately start doing things differently. Well, sure, I was more careful jumping onto docks. I learned that old lesson to look before you leap—and look again. But I didn't start wearing my PFD religiously, at all times and in all places, for years. It had just been a fluke, right?

That was almost 20 years ago. In subsequent years I moved up to larger and larger cruising sailboats, wrote articles for sailing magazines and a couple of books, and researched safety gear ad nauseum for a voyage I was then planning across the Atlantic. I helped write a boating safety book published by the American Red Cross and Coast Guard Auxiliary. I made a few offshore voyages from New England to the Caribbean and back. I thought I'd learned about most things that could happen in a storm at sea, and made long lists of equipment to have on board to prevent or manage such disasters.

Then a few years ago, several incidents happened in my local area. A sailor who rowed out to his moored sailboat slipped off the boarding ladder and drowned as the current swept him away within view of onlookers on shore. Another sailor moored his boat
in the harbor after a day of sailing, slipped on some slimy seaweed that had dripped from his mooring pendant onto the foredeck, and went over the rail; unable to get back on the boat, he drowned. Another highly experienced sailor was stepping off his dinghy to board his boat at a local yacht club and went into the water, hidden from view by another boat, as his wife watched from shore. By the time she saw the dinghy drifting free and called for help, it was too late.

It had been years since any sailors died in a storm in New England, but then three died on calm days in harbor where we all usually feel safe. If that much was happening in my tiny sliver of New England waters, how many such incidents were occurring nationally or worldwide? Why hadn't I heard more about such accidents?

I started analyzing Coast Guard reports of sailing fatalities. The published statistics don't actually tell us much; of course most boaters die from drowning, but what actually led to that? It was possible to find the actual stories online, however, and not just sailing deaths in the United States but all around the world. Every harbor town, every lake, every coast. The more I read—hundreds and hundreds of narratives of sailing fatalities, near fatalities, and lucky rescues—the more shocked I became. There were hundreds of ways to die! And the huge majority of them came from simple, everyday occurrences, not storms at sea or fires aboard or hitting a submerged object in the water and sinking the boat, all those things we've been taught to fear and try to prepare for. All those bestselling books about perfect storms and dramatic sea disasters seemed to have misdirected our fears (and safety precautions) off in only one or two directions, while meanwhile the grim reaper kept appearing in scores of other guises.

I'm not shocked anymore by all this information. Now I'm horrified.

Horrified, first, to realize that experienced, competent sailors do die just as I almost did, stepping off their boat onto a dock. Horrified to read so many other stories of sailors doing everyday things, just as I always had, that led to fatal consequences.
Horrified to realize that I had been at the edge of that cliff in the dark so many times, and that if I kept on sailing for another 30 years, the odds might slowly turn against me.

And horrified too to see so many other sailors making the same mistakes or taking the same risks, and almost always at times they thought there was no risk at all.

When there is a fatal disaster in a big yacht club race or other dramatic situation, it usually gets lots of press. Commissions are formed to investigate what went wrong. Recommendations are issued. Equipment is mandated. Many dollars are spent. But when two kids sailing a Sunfish on a lake end up dead, it makes only the local newspaper. When someone falls overboard reaching for a puppy or a hat and dies, family and friends grieve, but no national safety bulletins are issued. The stories aren't talked about where sailors gather or in the glossy magazines. “Death by drowning” appears in the statistics, but other sailors seldom hear about the everyday circumstances behind them.

There may be hundreds of ways to die while sailing, but preventing the huge majority of them doesn't require expensive safety gear, reports from commissions, or elaborate training programs.

It just requires knowing how it happens. And thinking and talking about it—an attitude adjustment of sorts.

My own attitude changed as I read more and more of the real stories. And I'm sailing more than ever now, happier than ever—and safer than ever.

Hopefully, reading these stories may have the same benefits for you.

I
'd like to thank the following organizations and individuals for providing source material for the narratives in this book.

The United States Coast Guard, which provides a wealth of boating safety information on its websites along with annual accident and fatality reports, and which provided personal assistance with more detailed incident reports for all sailing fatalities in U.S. waters over the last 4 years.

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch of the United Kingdom, which provides similar detailed information and reports about all significant boating incidents in UK waters.

U.S. Sailing, which investigates and reports on significant incidents that occur during sailboat races.

The Canadian Coast Guard, which provides statistical reports and information similar to that of its American counterpart.

State agencies that provided me with more specific information about sailing incidents that led to recent fatalities: California Department of Boating and Waterways, Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Oregon State Marine Board, Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, and Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission.

The many dozens of journalists of local and regional newspapers who have made the effort to uncover and report enough detail about boating incidents so that we can learn from what happened.

And most especially, thanks to all the coast guard and lifesaving organizations around the globe who conduct search-and-rescue missions and to their brave men and women who risk their own lives to rescue sailors who find themselves in trouble.

S
uddenly Overboard
is about sailing emergencies we don't usually hear about. Aside from a few storm stories included to round out the representative spectrum of things that can go wrong when sailing, you won't find the dramas of storms or sail races where a dozen boats capsize here. Those are the big stories, the ones that make the news and become movies, the stories that have led generations of sailors to presume that storms are what we have most to fear and prepare for. Hence the multimillion-dollar industry of must-have sailboat equipment and the library of books on heavy-weather sailing. This is not to minimize the threat of storms at sea or the precautions we sailors should take, but it belies the reality that the huge majority of sailing-related fatalities and rescues have nothing to do with storms.

Most of the stories here, in contrast, involve circumstances less grand and cinematic. Often the water is calm. Adrenaline is not flowing. Usually things happen quickly and unexpectedly, not after hours or days of “sailor against the sea.” Almost always the victims or survivors are enjoying their time on the water just before disaster strikes.

But this doesn't mean their stories are any less dramatic or emotional than the classic storm-battling incidents we've all learned about. Any incident involving a confrontation with mortality holds human drama—too often, tragedy—and demands our respect. And we learn from them just the same, or perhaps more so, since few of us will confront great storms, while everyone who gets on a boat, dinghy or cruiser, on a lake or an ocean, is every time in the same circumstances as the sailors in these stories.