Bob - I understand where you are coming from. We all must accept personal responsibility for our decisions and skills while sailing and we can't "hold the hand of" or monitor everyone who takes our boats out. But, all of us have been in a situation of "marginal safety," either as a result of conditions beyond our control or because we made the wrong decision. And as a club, we can provide the most well-maintained boats and equipment to help make everyone's experience as safe as possible when accidents happen.
Since I have been here (10 years) I have witnessed a number of capsized Scots - some even during our Basic Sailing classes. Some incurred minor (thankfully) injuries; some had lasting emotional impact on some of the participants. Fortunately for me, I wasn't in one of them - except for the Capsize Class, which is controlled and supervised. Many of us are aware of loss of life on our stretch of the Potomac during the past decade - one near the entrance to our marina in fact, although it wasn't a sailboat accident.
I see this issue as no different from recent auto requirements for seatbelts and airbags and child safety seats. We didn't have a PFD rule, to minimize COB risk during cooler months, until the last year or two and the club members decided that rule was important for personal safety. And, true, we have weather restrictions on the use of our boats, too. As we all become more aware of potential for human injury, we should accept responsibility for minimizing that potential as much as we can. And as we have widely varying weather conditions and skippers/crews with widely varying sailing experience, my opinion is "the safer we can make it, the better." Jan Earle
---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:59:19 +0000
>From: "Reikowski, Robert J." <breikowski@wmata.com>
>
>I know I will regret this.
>We sail in the Potomac.
>I would be more concerned if we were on the coast or even in coastal waters.
>None of our boats have ever gotten remotely close to capsizing except in capsizing class. (which is incredibly hard to capsize a flying scot, don't even want to think about trying to capsize a cruiser in the Potomac)
>What crew injury is going to be prevented by putting a floatie on the top of the mast?
>Loss of life? Seriously? (I am not talking about capsizing the boat, I am talking about it going turtle)
>I say we make a rule not to take the boats out in weather that would cause this condition, wait, we already have that rule.
>How about we make certain the captains of the boat are well trained before going out in open water? Oh, yea, we do that too.
>Before making more committees, how many people are getting injured? I would be more interested in follow up reports on preventing future injuries.
>How long Has the marina been there? And how many flying scots have gone turtle in that time period?
>Of course, somebody is going to say that if one person dies, that is too many.
>I agree, but the safest way to keep that from happening is to close the club and ban all people from sailing "just in case"
>Seriously, nothings broke, why are we getting so paranoid?
>Bob Reikowski
>
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