'....Fact, nothing to laugh at at all'. (The Lion and Albert)
Please go to the 'Weymouth' thread under Sailing and Events for the background details, with apologies for the need to cross-refer. These are the lessons I have learned, and fully intend to act on, from my dunking. Please may I emphasise that this is personal, so to speak, and little if any of it may be relevant to sailing the bigger Swallow Boats, but I hope at least some of it may be of general interest.
Lesson One - when preparing to sail single-handed, essential equipment such as Jelly Babies MUST be stowed within reach of the helming position. (Yes, I know, 'simples' you would think.)
Lesson Two - the mainsheet must always, meaning ALWAYS, be unjammed from the cams before letting go of the tiller for whatever reason. In my feeble defence, this is the first boat I have had with a clam cleat on the mainsheet, fitted last winter. It has been a great improvement, but I have to work on an instinctive default position and behaviour on this one (old dogs/new tricks etc). I have been warned!!
Lesson Three - I need a row of deepish notches in the top part of the after edge of the dagger board, together with a more robust and tighter shock cord retaining loop, so that, in the event of an inversion capsize, it is impossible for the board to retract into the boat. I am fairly confident that I could then right the boat on my own. (Yes, I should try it out, and I will on the next occasion I am in WARM waters - when will that be, I wonder?) This will be attended to forthwith.
Lesson Four - for my boat and kind of sailing, a VHF radio (which is essential on 'big' jaunts) which is not waterproof is absolutely useless and a waste of money. Had I had one, I would have been in the briny for far less time and would have been able to let the others know what had happened. (I am also cross with myself that, having done the VHF radio training etc, I missed an opportunity to send out a genuine Mayday). I am now, already, the chastened owner of a brand new, floating, waterproof VHF radio which flashes a red light when it gets wet (a Standard Horizon HX300, for those interested). I will experiment with attachment methods to me/the boat/both. I will probably back this up with a properly waterproof mobile, which are not as expensive as I thought.
Lesson Five - I will give serious consideration to acquiring an orange smoke flare. I don't know much about them or how I would have deployed it, but it might have galvanised Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom, watching from the cliff top, into doing something helpful. (For the present, anyway, I won't be going down the EPIRB route.)
Lesson Six - The tiller must be fixed to the rudder stock, not just slotted in. On the Trouper the tiller passes through an oval tiller port in the transom, and is held in place by the rudder downhaul (or uphaul). With the boat inverted, the tiller through the transom prevented the rudder from floating off its pintles - until the downhaul eventually floated itself free of its jamming cleat. At that point I lost both tiller and rudder and - crucially - the best way to hold onto the boat for a prolonged period. The end of the tiller fortunately protrudes aft of the rudder stock far enough for me to be able to arrange a pin to hold it in, and this mod is also in hand.
Lesson Seven - Never lose hope that a bloke in a RIB will come and haul you out, even if he then mysteriously disappears so that you can't thank him.
OVERALL LESSONS for us collectively. I want to suggest, strongly actually, that what happened doesn't change anything, and that the 'ultimate individual responsibility' model we have recently discussed should continue. It was my choice to join in the Weymouth event, not anyone else's, and responsibility for the consequences was also mine. I personally would not want it otherwise, and I am not sure that the 'buddy' system suggested by Colin would work in a sailing context (thanks for the thought, though, Colin!). However, we might perhaps organise radio communication a bit more seriously, strongly recommending (insisting?) that all participants in an event have a functioning VHF radio, and asking a named individual in the fleet to coordinate maintaining contact. Just a thought, and it might not have improved matters at all!
OVERALL LESSONS for me personally. A serious wake up call, and requiring me to rethink all sorts of things. I can make some useful safety mods to my boat and equipment. Much more importantly, I have been required to take into account the limitations, as well as the capabilities, of my boat. Partly unconsciously, I think my mindset had been that my weatherly little craft would not (could not, even) capsize. VERY silly thinking - of course she can, especially when I do something daft. Now that she has reminded me of that, I will try to change my mindset accordingly, with all its implications.
Some time ago Tony started a thread, still going strong, reminding some of us that not all Swallow Boats are Bay Raiders (or variants). Mine is one of those non-BRs, and I cannot expect her to do everything a BR can do. At the moment there isn't a small-boat contingent, apart from mine and an occasional Storm 15 (and welcome, Mark and Snowdrop?!), joining in our events. Maybe I have to stop being that annoying little brother, always wanting to join in and holding up the big boys ('Can I come too?' 'Wait for meee!').
Michael
(PS While typing the above, I flummoxed the spell-check. Instead of 'non-BRs', it wanted me to put 'non-bras'. I'm not entirely sure what one of those might be!)
