The following was provided by Ken Brown (sailing on Erin) recounting the Man Over Board experience during the Dunbar trip a few weekends ago. Thanks Ken!!
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The weekend of 29/30 March cruise from PE to Dunbar with a stay over on the Saturday night was enjoyed by the crew of the 3 yachts: Erin, Grand Slam and Tosca. The strong westerlies of the Saturday morning meant that unless we reefed Erin we would be there in no time at all, and as this was Tosca’s first time, we tried to go at a similar speed.
Having a G&T after 12 noon was most relaxing. We entered Dunbar in the afternoon, and with a neep tide of only a couple of metres we made sure there was no need for adjusting shore lines and more importantly we didn’t bottom out at night time.
After a few liquid refreshments, hosted by John Murphy of Erin, all 3 crews head up for a meal into Dunbar. This was followed by a return to Grand Slam for a drink before bed time. The next morning, some were slower than others to stir, some had to be convinced to get up with the smell of a cooked breakfast!!
So to the return journey. It was westerly on the nose most of the way back! Robert was skippering Andy & Pam’s boat Grand Slam. You could tell he didn’t want to mark the boat as it left the harbour with a look of concentration on his face. Dougie & his Mrs in Tosca headed off with their engine. So did we once the breakfast was consumed and the dishes were washed.
After leaving the harbour, it was in to the wind, sails up. This was to be the first of many sail raisings ahead of us. (The term whores knickers springs to mind!)
We headed for the Bass Rock keeping pointing as high as we could to clear the headland at Seacliff. Before long we settled in watching the other 2 yachts ahead.
As we approached the stone monument at the outer edge of the rocks at Seacliff, a place I have dived on many occasions for lobsters (and big ones at that), we spotted a yellow shape just floating, and no more. I said to John that looks very much like a hooded jacket with arms and its not empty, so with all hands on deck we tacked on a 180 and took a closer look. Unfortunately as we passed it it was a full yellow suited body face down in the water. As conditions were pretty calm, we decided on a stern recovery. So it was sails down and on the second attempt, Ewan, who we roped to the stern grabbed the upper section of the body. Now Ewan, like a few of us on Erin, is not short of upper body muscle (must be something to do with those sails and round the cans on the winches), so he got the first hold, I got the second, and Karl joined in. This was heavy individual, ( although as I recall Ewan being more verbally descriptive )as we landed it on board we feared the worst as we didn’t know what state it was going to be in when we turned it over! So we did to find that plastic outline of RNLI across the face of a plastic dummy filled with around 100kg of sand!
At this point we called it in on Channel 16, Aidan being as specific as possible that it was a dummy we had recovered. The Coastguard asked to speak to North Berwick RNLI who explained that they had put the practice dummy there early in the morning and they would join us forthwith out off Seacliff.
A 4 manned orange inflatable could be seen heading out from the beach to intercept us. As they came alongside we had a bit of a laugh and handed over their buddy – some dead weight!! With the excitement over, sails hoisted once again we proceeded to catch up with the others. Grand Slam had taken the tack all the way over to the Fife side and Tosca was hugging the south shore line. By the time we caught up with Tosca it was on the east side of Fidra. They were doing fine, so we tacked out into the Forth and had some lunch.
We tacked back in off Aberlady to check on Tosca once more to see if they wanted any extra crew on board to help sail back rather than motor, but they were fine, so we put our sails up and carried on.
We tack again and headed for Oxcars. On entering PE we went back to Erin’s normal berth, where Robert helped with the shore lines, keen to hear the details of the recovery!
Its one thing practising with a fender – its something else with a dead weight of 100kg!
Maybe its something one should practice more often with!!
Ken,
great photo but I thought you said you had one of you and Aidan standing at the shrouds with the dummy offering it a G&T?
That's a purple flying fish and a fluorescent yellow dummy in the space of a couple of weeks. What's next?
Posted by: Dr Bob | 23/04/2008 at 07:31 PM