8 safety lessons from 2019
‘My main take away from going overboard was how important it is to debrief and to get the crew to talk about it.’
Dee Caffari MBE is one of the world’s most experienced ocean sailors and skippers, having skippered a Volvo Ocean Race, a Global Challenge, a Vendée Globe, and the Barcelona World Race, as well as being the first woman to complete a westabout circumnavigation in 2006.
Nevertheless, in June this year, she found herself hanging over the side of a 50ft yacht, holding on by nothing more than a spinnaker sheet. It was a sobering experience for her and the crew, and illustrates how no-one, however experienced, is immune from getting into difficulty at sea.
If you were to do a debrief of your season, what would you discover that you could have done better, and what close calls did you get away with? Here are some lessons that some of the best sailors have learned in 2019…
1 SAIL FAST IN BIG WAVES
It is a rare experiment that exposes
