Why You Should Run Safety Drills on Your Sailboat
Recently I took a FEMA course about shooting situations, and the section on why to run safety drills really caught my attention. My work on sailboats as an instrutor and charter boat captain is driven by safety, and I believe in skill performance practice. What I found was a great set of reasons for honing skills through situational drills.
Why Run Drills
Exercises help to:
1. Clarify Roles and Responsibilities
While duties of captain and crew are fairly well-defined; there’s still room for assigning roles.
With varying abilities, it’s good to decide in advance who does, matching capabilities.
For example, sometimes we assign the role of steering the boat to the crew member with the least physical strength. That frees those with more power to roles that require pulling, throwing, and so on.
2. Find Resource Gaps
Until you actually run drills on your boat; you might not realize that you are lacking equipment, or that items you need should be relocated to a more accessible location.
For example, on one of our charter boats, the manual bilge pump handle is inside a difficult-to-reach locker, and there’s a far more convenient location in the cockpit.
Another example would be realizing that you are entirely lacking something, like a second anchor, accessible pliers to release a pin, or readily accessible backup lines.
3. Develop Individual Performance
When you actually go through the motions of practicing drills, you commit your actions to memory.
In one of our drills to drop the jib, one of my crew was at the helm for the maneuver.
For the second trip, same skill, he was handling the jib halyard and shackles. He said although it was the exact same drill, his experience was completely different.
Also, he reported that once he had served in each position – he even further understood what the crew person in the other position needed, had to do, and experienced.
4. Identify Opportunities for Improvement
There’s always room for improvement.
Once you have run through a practice; you can set goals to make that maneuver more efficient, make it faster, or redesign certain aspects of the procedure.
Without actually running the drill; you don’t know what is not going to go “right” and what will be utter fails.
I Don’t Go Anywhere Without:
- North American Rescue CAT tourniquets.
- PierShare to rent your dock out or rent a dock.
- BoatUS for your boat towing insurance! Code: “HEWAF88”
- Thank you Bill for being the Best Sailing Partner EVER!
