more safety at sea
May 28th 2007 20:09
Safety at sea: Safety at sea or indeed anywhere around your boat is more important than actually being able to handle it. In fact one comes before the other. I blush when I remember an incident I was involved in some years ago. Returning to my mooring I found a penis brained charter skipper had sailed his cruiser, lavishly decorated with topless femme fatales and guys dripping in gold chains and Brylcream through all the moored boats in our bay and had entangled himself (or at least his boat) in my mooring. This was not the first time it had happened so to avoid having my mooring cut I had placed a good length of chain between the mooring and the rope, so his prop was caught on my chain.
I noticed that he had cut my dinghy adrift while he was trying to extricate himself from the chain. Lol. I sailed calmly by and told him to get the hell off my mooring while I went and retrieved the dinghy from shore where it had drifted. I got the international finger signal for my trouble. I was starting to get a bit angry and so when I sailed toward shore to pick up my dinghy, along comes an unsuspecting stranger. He was in a brand new, first time in the water tinnie with a beautiful little 9 hp outboard. He was sitting in the back like some demigod and his two young sons were sitting in a line in front of him. I didn’t realise at the time but the fact that all three were wearing brand new life jackets should have warned me he was a new chum on the water.
“Hey mate can you retrieve my dinghy for me” I pointed to the desolate piece of fibreglass that was sort of shaped like a pea pod. The boater took one look, held his nose in the air sniffed loudly and nodded. Well this new chum got himself into so much trouble doing this one little chore that one of my crew had to dive in to the nasty infested waters of the Lane Cove river to help the new chum out and retrieve the dinghy at the same time. It was this that embarrassed me so much afterwards. The poor guy was put on a spot and instead of looking like a hero to his kids he was made to look like a geek. We all have to start somewhere and this guy was out minding his own business, entertaining his kids till I came along and stuffed up his day.
This new chum however was a lot smarter than some I have seen. He was decked out in all his glory and because he knew he was new at what he was doing he and his brood were wearing life jackets. In Tassie where I am at the moment it is law to wear a life jacket when in a vessel under certain size. We were doing a lifeboat launch drill. Using davits, falls & gripes. We had to climb around some steel ladders and stages so as well as wearing huge bulky, very cheap but totally legal life jackets we were wearing hard hats as well. I am not a small man, in fact I am almost a giant. I can hardly see my toes over my stomach as it is but with this life jacket attached to my chest my line of vision was about a metre ahead of my foot. Also the hard had had a brim which restricted my peripheral vision again to one metre ahead of my forehead. Well within an hour I managed to crack my head on a steel beam that I would have missed by inches if I had been bareheaded and could see what I was doing. It was a hard knock and I felt my neck judder but I was otherwise unharmed. What can I learn from this. I would have been perfectly happy to be without the legally required safety gear but by wearing it I showed that I could have hurt myself badly! By not wearing it I feel I would have done a better job and still not hurt myself as I was in familiar territory. My poor friend in his new tinnie was in unfamiliar ground and was doing the right thing for sure.
Safety is paramount in boating because if you stuff up it can be permanent.
I noticed that he had cut my dinghy adrift while he was trying to extricate himself from the chain. Lol. I sailed calmly by and told him to get the hell off my mooring while I went and retrieved the dinghy from shore where it had drifted. I got the international finger signal for my trouble. I was starting to get a bit angry and so when I sailed toward shore to pick up my dinghy, along comes an unsuspecting stranger. He was in a brand new, first time in the water tinnie with a beautiful little 9 hp outboard. He was sitting in the back like some demigod and his two young sons were sitting in a line in front of him. I didn’t realise at the time but the fact that all three were wearing brand new life jackets should have warned me he was a new chum on the water.
“Hey mate can you retrieve my dinghy for me” I pointed to the desolate piece of fibreglass that was sort of shaped like a pea pod. The boater took one look, held his nose in the air sniffed loudly and nodded. Well this new chum got himself into so much trouble doing this one little chore that one of my crew had to dive in to the nasty infested waters of the Lane Cove river to help the new chum out and retrieve the dinghy at the same time. It was this that embarrassed me so much afterwards. The poor guy was put on a spot and instead of looking like a hero to his kids he was made to look like a geek. We all have to start somewhere and this guy was out minding his own business, entertaining his kids till I came along and stuffed up his day.
This new chum however was a lot smarter than some I have seen. He was decked out in all his glory and because he knew he was new at what he was doing he and his brood were wearing life jackets. In Tassie where I am at the moment it is law to wear a life jacket when in a vessel under certain size. We were doing a lifeboat launch drill. Using davits, falls & gripes. We had to climb around some steel ladders and stages so as well as wearing huge bulky, very cheap but totally legal life jackets we were wearing hard hats as well. I am not a small man, in fact I am almost a giant. I can hardly see my toes over my stomach as it is but with this life jacket attached to my chest my line of vision was about a metre ahead of my foot. Also the hard had had a brim which restricted my peripheral vision again to one metre ahead of my forehead. Well within an hour I managed to crack my head on a steel beam that I would have missed by inches if I had been bareheaded and could see what I was doing. It was a hard knock and I felt my neck judder but I was otherwise unharmed. What can I learn from this. I would have been perfectly happy to be without the legally required safety gear but by wearing it I showed that I could have hurt myself badly! By not wearing it I feel I would have done a better job and still not hurt myself as I was in familiar territory. My poor friend in his new tinnie was in unfamiliar ground and was doing the right thing for sure.
Safety is paramount in boating because if you stuff up it can be permanent.
| 30 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
