Emergency Skills to Practice on Your Sailboat
On Sundays, we have Crew Sail in the morning and afternoon at St. Augustine Sailing. I love coming up with tough maneuvers to practice and situations to consider. Here’s a list of some of our recent practice session topics and critical dynamic situations we have practiced.
- Anchor under sail
- Sail off anchor
- Fish
- Cook
- Poker Run
- Bar hop (just kidding but good docking practice!_
- Man overboard
- Water guns
- Practice towing kayak
- How to don traditional life jacket
- Put on traditional pfd while IN the water
- Oral inflate an inflatable pfd while wearing
- Towing a dinghy
- Radio calls
- Heaving line practice
- Outboard engine troubleshooting
- Engine woes
- ROW reviews
- Get out that man overboard Lifesling and drag it around
- Take jib down wearing harness, jack lines
- Reef the main wearing harness, jack lines
Crew Sails Safety at Sea Drills.
- Engine quits
- Communicate
- Must raise sail
- Steering fails
- Communicate
- Must steer with sails
- Must retrieve and install emergency tiller
- Not enough wind to sail; no control
- Communicate
- Must perform emergency anchoring
- Terrible storm coming, jib won’t furl
- Communicate
- Must douse jib (demonstrate at least two methods)
- Boat is dragging, must re-anchor upwind
- Communicate
- Launch dinghy
- Rig bridle
Assorted situations as time allows
- Fire. – access hatches, shut down batts, galley from bow…
- High water alarm
- Engine overheat
- Prop foul

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- North American Rescue CAT tourniquets.
- Travelex is our trip insurer – click for a free quote.
- Girls That Scuba – members discount card for all things diving.
- Sailo for $100 off your next boat rental! Discount Code: “KimWa1”
- PierShare to rent your dock out or rent a dock.
- RoadId for $5 off your cycling/running/kayaking/travel id.
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- Thank you Bill for being the Best Sailing Partner EVER!