Sad but Important Note
Having spent the better part of three decades in law enforcement, I'm fully aware that there are some people who seem to be impervious to the phrase "it goes without saying." It's difficult to not sound condescending.
It should go without saying that when two people undertake (no pun intended) an off-shore blue-water cruise in a small cruising yacht, that everyone on board should be checked out in the basic operation of said yacht. It doesn't take that long to run through a few basic safety drills.
Every person on board should know how to stop the boat in an emergency, how to drop and furl the sails, how to start the engine, how to use the radio, how to fight a fire, how to close a thru-hull fitting, how to recover a person overboard, etc. Especially, when you're several hundred miles from help. The basic stuff!
Because, there can be times when the best cook in the world is useless, if that's all they know how to do.
What can happen when those basic fundamentals are neglected?
A cruising couple from Poland, Stanislaw Dabrowny and his wife Elisabeth, left on the first leg of their circumnavigation across the Atlantic on November 2nd from the Canary Islands towards Barbados. Their yacht was a Bavaria 44, S/Y VAGANT.
When their daughters had not heard from them by November 24th, the date they were supposed to arrive according to their schedule, they became concerned. "The last signal I received from them was more than 24 hours ago. It was a strange phone call during which my mother was screaming my name, but the call was broken", their daughter Aga wrote on her Facebook page.
It was later discovered that Stan had fallen overboard on Tuesday 21st November and Elisabeth had been unable to retrieve him.
The Bavaria 44' Vagant sails unattended into Lambeau Reef, Tobago after a tragic accident during its voyage from the Canary Islands.
Zero Sailing Knowledge is Unacceptable
Be safe!
Semper Paratus,
/fl