Tethers and Jacklines

“Why wasn’t s/he wearing a safety line?” This is always the first question when a story breaks about a MOB situation. The odd response to this is, sometimes, the MOB individual WAS wearing a tether… but drowned anyway.

Such was the case in one incident where another British sailor died after he fell off his foredeck while wearing a tether. The issue was that his tether was so long that he was in the water long enough to drown before he could be recovered by his crew.

There are other articles about tests on tether safety, as well. In one such study, the only time a tether was helpful to the MOB test dummy was when he used a short tether and happened to fall over on the windward side of a heeled over sailboat (which kept him completely out of the water). In every other scenario – long or short tether – the towing trials showed that once you are in the water, the speed of the boat’s wake and the movement of the waves conspires to force water up and around your head and face… which would make breathing impossible.

The conclusions from the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) report of 2015 state that if you are in the water and tethered to your boat, it will be the speed of the boat that becomes dangerous to you. And that it will be dangerous to you very quickly, with determinations stating that a person would drown in about a minute. Therefore, the best chance to save you at this point is to stop the boat (or slow to under 2 knots) in less than a minute!

So, as you can see, this is a set of conditions that are highly stacked AGAINST the person who has fallen overboard. Which is why not falling in at all has to be the priority.

From this report, we learn that short tethers are the way to go. And clipping them on the windward jackstay gives you the best possible chance of remaining on board if you fall to leeward (or clear of the water if you fall to windward).

Josh and I also plan to employ “double-clip” tether lines, so that if we have to move our tether up or down the boat we are never NOT clipped on.