The decision to abandon your vessel is one of the most critical decisions you may have to make in your life.
It’s also one of the hardest decisions to make, since we have an emotional and financial attachment to our vessels. It’s our livelihood, and we are responsible for crewmembers’ lives.
In an emergency, the brain tends to be flooded with often conflicting emotions—‘this can’t be happening to me’, fear, guilt, shame and a flood of stress hormones, which make it hard to make decisions quickly.
In 1989, 1,200 miles from shore west of Coast Rica, the f/v Butler was attacked by pilot whales that breached the 38-foot vessel’s hull and caused it to sink. ‘Bill’ made numerous trips into the vessel as it was sinking to gather more tools and supplies for the now inflated life raft.
‘Simonne’ screamed to him, “The boat is going to sink, what’s wrong with you. Come on let’s go!”
Bill entered the sinking boat again, this time with water up to his armpits, and went to the bow to get more gear. He was thinking about all the weather and miles they have gone through on the vessel.
Simonne snaps him out of his attachment to the vessel by saying, “If you don’t get into the raft right now, I’ll cut the painter line. The boat is going down!!”
This caused him to stop his salvaging efforts and return to the life raft. Main point: if your vessel is more dangerous than being in the ocean, it’s time for you to get off your vessel!
Remember that your life, your family and your community are more important than your gear, catch or your vessel.
Even highly experienced vessel captains have been stunned into inaction in an emergency at sea. Waiting too long to abandon can result in entrapment or entanglement, which are the two greatest risks in abandoning the vessel.
If you stay inside the cabin too long in an emergency, it can be difficult or impossible to fight against the thousands of pounds of water pouring in. Leave the vessel with enough time to make an exit.
If the vessel capsizes or lays on its side, you can be easily disoriented. Putting on an immersion suit is difficult when the bulkhead is now the cabin sole. Wearing an immersion suit or personal flotation device inside a submerged enclosed space can make it even harder to exit due to its flotation if you have to dive into water to reach an exit.
Fishermen are generally very aware of not wearing garments like straps on PFDs, strings from hoodies and the hazards of fishing lines and nets or the vessel itself that can cause an entanglement.
A fishing vessel’s working deck is crowded with entanglement hazards. Having a knife on your person at all times to cut oneself out of an entanglement is a good maritime practice.
Giving yourself time to leave the vessel without having to make a desperate scramble will reduce the likelihood of entanglement. Be sure to point out the risks of entrapment and entanglement during your safety orientation for crewmembers.
Sinking a Myth
In the reverse situation, leaving the vessel too early can also be deadly. Take the f/v St. Patrick.
On Dec. 2, 1981 the St. Patrick was off Kodiak Island when flooding was discovered in the bilge. There were 11 people onboard.
All were told to abandon the vessel since it was feared that once the batteries got under water they would explode (which is unlikely). Only two of the crew survived. They were the only crew wearing immersion suits.
The St. Patrick was later found floating with no crew and was towed to Kodiak Island where it finally sank 14 years later.
An old maritime myth still persists that a sinking vessel will “suck you down.” This has been used as a reason to leave the vessel too early in some cases, when the vessel itself stayed afloat.
Water sucking you down as your vessel sinks is not a likely risk. Entrapment and entanglement are actual risks.
Take the case of Charles Joughin chief baker on the HMS Titanic. If suction was an actual risk, he would have been a victim since he was standing on the stern of the Titanic when it went down (you can see him in the movie Titanic quietly standing next to Kate and Leonardo when the stern goes down). Joughin was quoted in Walter Lord’s classic book A Night to Remember.
On the sinking, Joughin stated: “I was standing on the stern, as it went down it was like taking an elevator. I tightened my lifebelt. I entered the water and didn’t even get my head wet.”
If suction was a risk, it certainly would have been evidenced on the Titanic. You can also check out the Mythbuster video series for the segment on this topic as they sink a tugboat and a person just floats off the tug as it sinks.
TIP: If time allows, before you leave the vessel, plug the vents to your fuel tanks. It will save you time and money when you are required to mitigate the fuel spill related to the sinking.
Be a good risk for the Coast Guard. Contact them early when you think you have a problem. They can help guide you through the choices. But the decision to leave the vessel will be up to you. They can’t visualize the situation you’re struggling with.
For every mission, the well-trained pilots, rescue swimmers, vessel and air crews conduct a risk/benefit assessment based on a number of factors including weather, fuel and survival time of those needing rescue.
They don’t have a manual that tells them when to go and when not to go out. It’s to our advantage to be a good risk to them by being prepared with survival gear. A helicopter or vessel coming to your rescue is risking their own lives to save you.
Rescuers value their lives as much as you value your own. Make yourself a good risk for them by not skimping on equipment such as immersion suits, survival craft, EPIRB, dewatering pumps, bilge alarms and extras.
Conduct maintenance to keep the vessel watertight. Install two automatic pumps — one higher in the bilge than the other, in case the lower one shorts out. Coastal Alaska has many dead zones for VHF coverage, and now SSB emergency frequencies are only being monitored by the Coast Guard for Kodiak and Hawaii due to the lack of distress calls elsewhere.
Make sure the DSC on your VHF radio is hooked up to your plotter. Consider other emergency devices such as a PLB, AIS, satellite phone, InReach, Spot, Starlink etc. and newer smart phones that link “SOS” button to satellites.
Survival gear requirements are a minimum, not a maximum.
Train your crew in what is expected of them in an abandon ship evacuation and practice using survival gear during monthly drills. Make sure all crew know how to use the radio and can relay your location.
Regarding the Butler, thanks to Simonne’s insistence that they leave the vessel, they lived to fight another 66 days and were rescued in their life raft. Knowing when to leave the vessel saved their lives and could save yours, as well.
The Alaska Marine Safety Education Association (AMSEA) has a mission is to reduce injury and death in the marine and freshwater environment through education and training provided by a network of marine safety instructors. The Sitka, Alaska-based organization has been offering marine safety training to commercial fishermen and thousands of other mariners since 1985.
More information on marine safety topics can be found at www.amsea.org