Staying safe solo

Originally posted by Daniel Holman I would say that #1 thing when sailing solo is to sail upwind of where you have launched.

Good point.  Where I have a choise of direction, I do the upwind or upcurrent leg first, so that in case of problems, I am more likely to drift back to my port of call, rather than another country.  In the case of tides, I would try to time it so that I have a favourable drift back to port in the second half.

Always carry an alternative means of propulsion: on the laser this is a paddle tied to the painter between bow eye and mast.

Yep and with a Laser it doesn't tend to get demasted as such- you blow out a top section and there's a lot of clutter up there, but you can still limp home with a bust top section.

I think some classes also make safety and knowledge sharing around this a priority- take the MPS as an example, you are always advised to carry a spare tiller extension up the boom. I learnt this from Paul M when I bought mine, he ran through a few other tips as well, checked I had rescue cover for my furst outings and set some on the strings up to make sure I wouldn't get in a pickle with the kit- a very responsible handover.

The gp is better suited for caring things such as an anchor or paddle etc. Or even a small outboard But some classes like the moth or an mps don't really have the room for such things

You might find the sea chimp agrees with you grumpf... that's kind of the point of this thread, a follow up to the moth sailor who was pulled out of the solent by the RNLI earlier this week.

Edited by rogue - 01 Feb 12 at 9:35am