Man Overboard

MOB Chronicles from Grant at NauticEd

In our days as seaschool instructors, we taught the MOB maneuver hundreds of times. It was one thing most of our students looked forward to. Every student regarded a successful maneuver as a major accomplishment after methodically going through every step and recovering “Bob”, our long-suffering dan buoy. However, Bob had a nasty habit of slipping overboard at the worst of times. At the first call for “Man Overboard”, the crew usually did not even properly register that something was wrong. By the time they realized that action was required, poor old Bob is floating several boat lengths behind us and there is total chaos and pandemonium on board. It is remarkable how quickly all the MOB steps are forgotten when there is prep time, when you are called to act out of instinct immediately, perhaps instinct you have not developed. That is why we not only teach the proper MOB procedure, but we insist everyone knows how to do the Crash Stop. It is simple and easy to do even for only one crew member, a very important thing when the one and only priority should be to focus on getting your crew member back on board. Grant at NauticEd has chronicled a few of his own MOB stories with some valuable lessons for all of us and the techniques in detail of how to do the maneuvers and command the situation. See our detailed explanation of the catamaran crash stop manuever sequence.