Originally Posted by
JimQuanci
When you talked about hanging from your harness... being a new feeling...
So maybe you have already, but to be sure, do have climbed up the mast several times at the dock (if you haven't already). Going up the mast at sea is 10x harder then at the dock... the only chance you can get to the top of the mast when at sea is having had the experience of doing it several times before.
As Pat said a few times on the tether man overboard issue... the trick is just not falling overboard (ie frequent use of the short tether). All the other ideas won't work in most situations - ie climbing some sort of ladder or pulling one self aboard through an open stern are only going to work in little wind and little waves. In a more typical "pacific average" 15k of wind with the boat doing 6k-7k and some waves, none of us has the strength to pull oneself back on the boat. At 6k of boat speed you are being pulled under water by your tether - and the load on the tether is tremendous. Recall Moore 24 back in the mid-90s DH with one of the crew down below and the other one being "towed" by the boat... when the sleeping crewman discovered the problem, he struggled to slow the boat down enough to be able to pull their partner back aboard by their tether... had to drop the main to get the boat to slow down enough to get them back aboard... and we all remember the J29, again DH and one of the crew being incapable of getting the other one aboard, even with the crew only being half in the water dangling by their tether. So the odds of saving yourself when singlehanded in the water dangling by your tether are very low... before hypothermia kicks in...
Stay out of the water!