8 Safety Lessons From 2019

A good sailor learns from experience, or better, from the experiences of others. Theo Stocker looks back to see what seamanship and safety lessons we can take from this year’s events

‘My main take away from going overboard was how important it is to debrief and to get the crew to talk about it.’

Dee Caffari MBE is one of the world’s most experienced ocean sailors and skippers, having skippered a Volvo Ocean Race, a Global Challenge, a Vendée Globe, and the Barcelona World Race, as well as being the first woman to complete a westabout circumnavigation in 2006.

Nevertheless, in June this year, she found herself hanging over the side of a 50ft yacht, holding on by nothing more than a spinnaker sheet. It was a sobering experience for her and the crew, and illustrates how no-one, however experienced, is immune from getting into difficulty at sea.

If you were to do a debrief of your season, what would you discover that you could have done better, and what close calls did you get away with? Here are some lessons that some of the best sailors have Dee Caffari learned in 2019...

1 SAIL FAST IN BIG WAVES

It is a rare experiment that exposes a large group of standard cruising boats to the rigours of the Southern Ocean and a non-stop circumnavigation, but that’s what the 2018-2019 Golden Globe Race did.

Fewer than half of those who started finished the race, with several boats knocked down or dismasted. Having been knocked over to 120º, Dutchman Mark Slats threw warps out astern to steady his Rustler 36 Ohpen Maverick, but found the boat hard to control. Once he had fixed the wind vane steering on his boat, he retrieved the warps and the boat ‘began to sail a lot better’. To minimize the impact of the waves and to gain control, he found that sailing at ‘maximum power’ with the waves was the best tactic.