Expensive safety-at-sea lesson could have been worse

I am lucky to be able to say that my most memorable sailing safety lesson cost me only a spinnaker.

It does pain me a bit to say only a spinnaker. It was a wonderful spinnaker, almost new, the fastest in our inventory, and I loved it. But it was still just a material possession, and in the scheme of things that can go wrong at sea, that is a small loss. No one was in any danger, but in other circumstances the mistake I made could have threatened someone’s life.

It was our last sail of the season, a 50-mile jaunt to the yard that would be the boat’s winter home. Delighted with a forecast that called for robust wind from astern, we left with high hopes of putting our almost new boat to the test in breezy downwind conditions.

The breeze was slow in working up to its predicted 25-30 knots, so we decided to set one of our biggest asymmetric spinnakers. I remember thinking that if the wind did reach its forecast potential, it would be an adventure for our small crew to get this sail down and keep it on the boat.

The thought was blown away by exuberance as the breeze came on. Soon we had everything we wanted—plenty of wind and big surfing seas. The boat loved it as much as we did, following that big chute over the waves on a broad reach that was so much fun it left us in a state of nonalcoholic intoxication. During one 30-minute period, we swore the speedometer never dropped below 15 knots.

All of that speed only hastened the arrival of the moment of truth. We were soon abeam of our destination; the sail had to come down.

It came down, but as in my premonition, not on the boat. In the water, it took control of the boat.

Dealing with a submerged spinnaker—“shrimping” in the vernacular—can challenge a full racing complement. With the boat streaming from what had become the world’s largest sea anchor, our shorthanded crew was seriously overmatched. So much so that the normally calm, rational and cool-headed skipper lost his cool. I thought, if only I could maneuver the boat closer to the spinnaker to relieve some of the pressure, we would have a chance of saving it. So without consulting anyone, and with only a cursory check on the location of the sheets and halyard attached to the spinnaker, I started the engine and put it in gear.

Buzzers, sirens, klaxons, alarms of all kinds should be going off now among readers. Every sailor knows that when you are trying to recover an overboard object—a mere material possession or a precious human being—you never, ever engage the propeller until you are absolutely certain there is nothing hanging from the boat that will foul it.

There is a sort of Murphy the Sailor’s law that says there will always be something. It certainly proved true in our case. The prop grabbed a sheet and in an instant did what we couldn’t do—dragged spinnaker and boat together. The sail was pulled into the propeller so aggressively that it not only disabled the engine but impaired steering by wrapping around the rudder.

This magnificent, Technicolor, many-faceted foul-up—both engine and steering compromised and the boat all but permanently attached to the sea anchor—vividly reinforced the fundamental axiom of person-overboard recovery: You start by not doing something; you resist the temptation to start the engine. You sail back to make the recovery, keeping the engine in reserve to be used, only after all lines are accounted for, for a last critical maneuver.

If having to put that axiom in practice is a sailor’s worst nightmare, recovering a person overboard is a sailor’s ultimate feat of seamanship.

The United States Sailing Association honors sailors who have accomplished this feat. One of this year’s recipients of U.S. Sailing’s Arthur B. Hanson Rescue Medal was Ellen Parry Schmidt who, left alone on a Santana 20 when both of her crew members went overboard, saved two lives with remarkably skilled boat handling.

The boat was sailing under spinnaker to the start of a race off Newport, California, in 10-12 knots of wind with 4-foot seas. The water temperature was a cold 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

PFDs were on the cockpit sole. Skipper and crew decided they would put them on after jibing the spinnaker. The boat’s throwable flotation device was below.

Bow crew Liz Sears was the first to go overboard. She slipped on the wet foredeck when the boat rolled during a jibe. Alana Shearer rushed forward to take the spinnaker down, and was soon in the cold Pacific Ocean too.

Think of the nightmare Schmidt faced: She was alone. She had to keep track of two people in the water without flotation gear. She had to sail a boat burdened with a spinnaker upwind. If she didn’t do everything right, two people could die.

Ignoring the flailing spinnaker, she executed a classic quick-stop maneuver. Shearer, who was lucky to have been caught in a spinnaker sheet, was recovered in just two minutes. Back on board, Shearer and Schmidt cleared the spinnaker, and then sailed the boat on a beat back toward Sears.

They pulled her back on board 14 minutes after she fell off the bow. It wasn’t a moment too soon—Sears showed signs of hypothermia.

I hope I never have to do what Ms. Schmidt did so well. But if I ever face that challenge, I will at least be armed with a lesson that was indelibly imprinted when I took an ugly serrated-edge knife and helped cut away that beautiful spinnaker.