Racing "Big Boats" on SF Bay aboard a classic wooden schooner highlights the need to brief crew on the specifics of their roles onboard. Read more

The failure rate of life jackets can be alarmingly high without proper attention Read more

After several fatal short-handed crew overboard incidents involving members of the Sailing Foundation in Seattle, three of the members (Fred Hayes, Dick Marshall, Doug Fryer) began to search for a solution to short-handed overboard accidents. Their research into accidents, both successfully and unsuccessfully executed, found that a consistent theme for recreational boaters was that the skipper or the more experienced sailor was likely to be the one who went overboard.

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Whether you call them flares, or visual distress signals (VDS), or pyrotechnics, some visual form of getting attention from boaters or rescue agencies has been a mainstay of the Federal Recreational Boat Equipment requirements for decades. And during that time, boaters have cursed the negative attributes of these devices: their need to be replaced every 3 ½ years; the difficulty of disposing of them; their potential risk to health when in use; and their relative… Read more

"What If?" is an excellent game to play onboard or ashore, with both experienced and inexperienced crew, day or night, at anchor or underway. Read more

Lithium batteries are a fact of life in this day and age, and, like so many other things aboard, we must treat them with care. When I wrote the CCA article on Fire in the Boat – Prevention, I gently danced around the issue of fires in smaller Lithium-Ion and Lithium-Metal batteries. There I talked about the issues of charging them (don’t let that happen in a bunk or under a sail), and the high heat they generate when shorted. Read more

Good seamanship should include the ability to assess, address, and anticipate. The best offshore sailors use sight, smell, hearing, and feel to monitor what is going on below, on deck and in the wider environment for whatever may come next. Experience lets the crew member distinguish the significant concerns from normal variations. In a perfect world, every issue would be caught before it becomes a problem or emergency. Let’s snap back to reality—it’s not going to happen… Read more

In Stephen Covey’s best-selling self-help book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, one chapter is titled “Sharpening the Saw”.

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After two major collisions with substantial loss of American lives between US Navy destroyers and merchant ships, many of us went to websites that provide histories of the movements of the ships in the area up to the minute of the collision.

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In the early 1970s, a new method of categorizing life jackets was introduced by the Coast Guard and Underwriter’s Laboratories, using five “types” and a new, strange name for life jackets: the Personal Flotation Device.

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On the night of November 29, 2014, while competing in the second leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, Vestas Wind ran aground on Cargados Carajos Shoal shortly after local sunset.

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