The safety briefing before the trip
It is the first morning of the trip, the crew is having breakfast in the cockpit. The boat handover and the shopping for provisions went well yesterday, and the mood is a mix of excitement and anticipation of the first leg. The skipper already has a lot on their mind, such as whether the weather suits the day, how to organise casting off and whether the place where the crew moors tonight is sheltered from the wind. And above all: how will they run the safety briefing in a moment? After all, with it the holiday mood turns into something like a duty for the first time on this trip.
In short:
- The checklist for the safety briefing should be handed out to the crew a few weeks before the trip, so that the briefing on board is a repetition and not a flood of new terms.
- The skipper's role is usually known, just as important are the rules for working together with the crew, such as handing over the helm or making sure the skipper hears about every change on the boat.
- It is often seemingly obvious little things like one hand for the ship that prevent accidents, so they should be mentioned explicitly in the briefing.
- When going through the man-overboard situation, the skipper should concentrate on a single manoeuvre that suits the crew's abilities, with clear phases and roles, so that everyone knows their task.
To take along
What belongs in the safety briefing on a sailing yacht?
A complete safety briefing ranges from the rules on board via the equipment and the boat's technology to talking through the emergency situations in which everyone needs to know what to do.
The checklist linked above covers this in detail and can be downloaded as a PDF. This article does not go through every item, only what typically gets too little attention in the briefing.
Hand out the safety briefing before the trip
The checklist for the safety briefing should ideally be made available to the crew a few weeks before the trip, together with the packing list and the other documents that are sent out anyway when planning the sailing trip.
When hearing it for the first time, your head is usually busy sorting out all the new terms, from the companionway to the seacock, and little attention is left for the actual procedures. If the crew already knows the terms, they can link the new to the familiar and have more capacity for what can only be shown on board, namely where things are on this boat and how they work.
Whoever has read the checklist beforehand also brings along the questions that came up while reading, for example about a term or a task they have never seen. The skipper can then answer them specifically during the briefing on board, often right at the spot in question.
The skipper's role: responsibility and command
Most people on board know the skipper's role, more important for the briefing are the procedures that follow from it when working together with the crew. The helm, for example, only changes hands with an explicit handover in which the new helmsman confirms taking over, so that it is clear at all times who is steering.
It also includes the skipper hearing about every change on the boat, for example when a line is cast off, a fender is moved or the anchor light is switched off, because that is the only way they keep the overview. How easily this gets lost often shows in the hectic moment when coming alongside, when the skipper helps with the mooring lines and a crew member simply takes the helm or works the throttle without telling them, so that at that moment it is no longer clear who is actually steering the boat.
Mention the obvious things too
Some things are so obvious to the skipper that they hardly mention them any more, while the crew has never heard them or learned them differently on another boat. These rules are examples:
- On deck one hand always holds on and you take the next handhold before letting go of the last, because the boat can move suddenly at any time.
- You go down the companionway facing the steps like a ladder, because that way you can hold on when the boat moves.
- When mooring and casting off you only step across once the boat is close enough to the pontoon, because the gap usually changes at exactly the moment you jump.
The checklist lists a few more, from shoes during manoeuvres to the order for shore power. It is these simple things that prevent many typical accidents on a holiday sailing trip.
The man-overboard manoeuvre
Most skippers know a man-overboard manoeuvre from their training, but only rarely from their own experience. For the briefing the skipper should therefore concentrate on a single manoeuvre that suits the crew's abilities, because one well-prepared manoeuvre helps more in an emergency than several that have only been half discussed.
It becomes tangible when the procedure is divided into the four phases of keeping sight, approaching, securing and recovering, and for each phase it is settled who takes on which task. Ideally the manoeuvre is practised once right on the first leg, while the briefing is still fresh.