But the topic is driving me a bit nuts.

Firstly, going swimming is simply disrespectful to a billion years of evolution back through your family tree; it's simply an unforgivable, wrong thing to do, a serious mistake.

Secondly, ending up swimming (in the vast majority of dinghies, there might be a couple exceptions) just shows errors in technique (or maintenance if the toe-straps break). For heavens sake, just keep hold of the boat (or a sheet, any darn thing) and either boom walk and climb over the top onto the plate, or if you are slow and it inverts, still no need to end up in the oggin. Don't fight lost causes, just get motivated to stay out of the soup. Pretend there are piranha fish and hungry sharks in there if that helps.

The only person I've seen with a justifiable reason for swimming was Mr Kneewrecker/Yellow-welly (or whoever he was that week) showing off, whilst in the heyday of his love affair with the 100, when he produced a wonderful, clowning video of different ways to mess up and fall in. And look what happened after that - the relationship went horribly sour.

So here's a controversial proposition. For 95%+ of dinghy sailors, there is no excuse to end up in the water more than once for every 100 capsizes. If you do and you can't get back in, it's not the boat designers fault.

Having said all this, I did once find myself flying around the kite-luff of a 14 when 0.25 seconds before we were planing along quite happily, albeit just after me saying to Mike "isn't it bit shallow here?" so my bad. But as we'd almost immediately then run aground rather hard, swimming transpired to be rather unnecessary, given the bit of Chichester harbour I found myself in transpired to be only 15 inches deep.

many times Maxi, to the extent I have a conditioned reflex to let go of the tiller extension and keep hold of the mainsheet. 

And I did say 99 times out of 100, there is no need...

Oh grumph, assume, assume, yadda yadda yadda. The first half of my sailing life involved growing up by the sea and circuit sailing all over the place in all sorts of boats. The present is not necessarily a good indicator of the past. Like most, I too have done some crazy things in the past.

But for what its worth, as far as I can recall, my only need of a safety boat in the last 25 years was when I broke a boom at the wrong end of the Rutland . No swimming involved 

My point remains. Too many people find themselves needing "to swim and swim fast' because when things started to go wrong they did not react in a way that kept them from the need for swimming. This is not an 'elf 'n' safety point I am trying to make either. In the context of a sailing race, going swimming is flippin' slow. Focus on getting on the board without the Mark Spitz impressions and you are back racing far more quickly. Hydrophobia is fast. (used to sail a boat called hydrophobia, and it was fast too)

BTW, does a mast ever fall down expectedly? And if those 2 events are not covered by my "1 in 100", you have different issues to address.

The 200 isn't a great boat for running up the boom as the shrouds get in the way before you get high enough to climb over the deck (and I've damaged a brand new drysuit trying), so it tends to be better to swim round (often getting caught in the mainsheet bridle on the way!).

One thing I am in total agreement with is that it is far quicker to stay out of the water if you can; it's just that I think it's more possible on some boats than others.

So I wrote a book (that lots of people like and find helpful). Get over it. But thanks for the plug anyway.

However, the catalyst for this topic was only the fuss on the Aero thread, nothing else. We are not all as cynical as you.

Let's also reverse things. Even If I spent the next 5 years trying to master sailboards (ain't gonna happen) I'd still be falling in the water left right and centre. If you then saw me in action, you'd wonder (probably vociferously) why all the splashing about. Which would be fair enough - you'd diagnose that I was reacting the wrong way. aka Swimming = need for education

 Absolutely. if you don't capsize now and then, you are not pushing hard enough. 

Both on the Medway and on the lake where I spent a lot of my formative years, inverting means getting stuck in the mud and needing RIB assistance, at least often enough (30%?) that by the time you've blown a couple of races through it, you really don't want to be doing it.

So, unless one of us gets lucky, we tend to end up, I won't say swimming, more floating.  Luckily, with the sealed mast, the 3k doesn't invert unless you make it do so. I usually brave the bridle and arrive at the board cursing the superfluous side-tank buoyancy (the board's not that high in reality, but if my arms are in a puny, untrained phase...) and we fumble the boat upright and ourselves back into it.  

It ain't fast, and it's not pretty, but it is fairly rare and much better than blowing the entire race (and in one case regatta) by waiting for rescue with the mast firmly in the mud.

There are classes where if you try to stay dry the boat will normally invert, and (in the alternative) will come up with a gutfull of water instead of a dry cockpit - the Tasar is one. Hanging onto a Tasar in a capsize is extremely slow (in my experience). I held onto our cat (copy of a Hurrican 5.9) in our last capsize because I was in an odd position, and that drove the mast into the mud.

Secondly, a lot of the time swimming is the fastest way to get from where you end up in a big stack, to where you need to be- and that time can be vital.

Thirdly, .... something. Something that would really clinch the argument. Something I've now forgotten, and pizza's coming out of the oven.

Fourthly*, even when you don't have to pretend there are hungry sharks in there, motivation is not always enough to keep you out of the water. When it all goes pear shaped and you end up swimming, it's good if it's familiar.

Of course, all this is assuming reasonable gear and water temperatures. But even in our puddle in winter (8 degrees water temp) I'd rather have the option of really knowing how to use swimming as a tool in recovery, even if it wasn't a tool that was normally used.

* yep, it really was fourth - I'd just parked idea No 3 for a while in the hope that I could remember what it was. I'm sure it was worth saying, even if no one else would.

Cheers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQHLZYU2xuA" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQHLZYU2xuA

Or to look at it another way - in some classes it's said that you can only learn how NOT to capsize, by capsizing. One champ said to me "it takes 300 capsizes to learn how to sail a 12 Foot Skiff", and if that's true then it's arguably better to get all 300 capsizes over as soon as possible, rather than spending 7 seasons ruining every race by capsizing every race. It's faster to find where the limits are by going over them. 

Note they weren't "too far back" when it was upright- the boat requires all moveable ballast to the rear in those conditions. Better, when you do get a blown down, to accept the fate and make preperations to enter the water gracefully. I can heartily recommend not falling boot, head or hand first onto the window in the mainsail.

I lost my footing standing up in my phantom once- to the onlookers it looked like I ran out of the boat backwards.... they jeered, and even with the inevitable bad start I still got the bandit moniker upon returning to shore.

I can recommend it too. The worst time was when I had met a brilliant sailing-mad woman and we went out sailing on her high-performance cat about the fifth time we met. I went through her main when we tipped it in.

Oh, the anguished feelings of going foot-first through the expensive mainsail of the woman you are trying to impress. It's amazing how one can feel emotions with such clarity and depth when you're four feet under and going fast through mylar.....

Oh, the joyous feelings when, through the bubbles of shame, you see her going through the same hole half a second later, and realise that you don't have to take all the blame......

A dozen years later, we now have a cat with a tougher main, and she's gone through my Tasar's training mainsail so we're all square.

 

That looks like the B14 Worlds at Falmouth. I was in a safety boat with two photographers following the tangerine boat and it was the most spectacular capsize I have ever seen. They were hit by a massive gust. When they came ashore they were badly bruised but smiling about it.

Knee first is a bad idea as well, I've discovered. And just about any part of the mainsail will do. :-/

In both cases sailing in will be difficult, but I would expect the gooseneck to be less hassle and cost to repair.

In the end, I agree with Al: accept your fate and dive in.

me first, boat second.... I'd pick the sail over the boom too.  

This deserves a Bump - fo no reason other than it made me smile more than anything on here for a long time.

Believe me, I really don't like to swim but...