Molly O’Brien

Molly O’Brien is the nickname of one of the most important skills a sailor can have. It is the ability to recover someone who has fallen overboard in a timely manner. Every reputable sailing school teaches the techniques to be used and requires the students to practice frequently. It is analogous to the emergency landing drills taught to student pilots by flight schools. In both cases, you only get one chance to get it right and failure can be lethal.

On our Offshore Passage Making course, the exercise was a doozy.

I had the 8:00 PM to midnight watch. We were three days out of Bermuda and heading for Fort Lauderdale, Florida. At 11:40, the Captain came on deck and we watched as he rigged a survival strobe light to a life ring, turned it on and tossed it over the stern. He then said "Shhhhh!" and went back to his cabin.
Thinking that this would be interesting, we woke the midnight to 400 AM watch but said nothing to them. Then, rather than going to our bunks, we lingered in the cockpit for a quiet smoke.

At 12:30 AM, the Captain popped up on deck and asked, "Has anybody seen Molly O’Brien lately?" A look of horror flashed across the still-sleepy mid-watch’s faces.

I piped up, "I saw her about an hour ago. She was on deck having a smoke when I went below to use the john. When I came back, she wasn’t here and I assumed she’d gone below to sleep." This played into the Captain’s plan. A missing crew member at night just before watch change might not be noticed for a looooong time. The Captain had one of the two men on night watch go below and check on "Molly’s" bunk, knowing she wouldn’t be there. He returned a moment later to report her missing.

The Captain turned to the two men on night watch and asked "Now what are you going to do?"

They immediately started the engine, brought the sails in to center, and reversed our course. My watchmate and I took up positions as forward lookouts as we pounded headlong into the following seas. Thirty minutes later while were on the top of a wave, the port lookout reported a strobe a few degrees off the port bow. In another ten minutes we were along side the life ring and working hard to maneuver in fifteen foot seas to retrieve "Molly". It took us another ten minutes.

Ridiculous? Hardly. It was one of the most realistic MOB drills I’d ever seen. It showed that in WARM waters, it was possible to find someone in the middle of the ocean and recover them alive.

This is the reason the sailing school required each of us to have a sea harness to keep us from falling overboard with a self-contained, life preserver which automatically inflates when the wearer is immersed in water and also with a small but powerful battery-powered strobe light visible for upwards of three miles in the dark. Together, these things cost about $300, but they can be well worth the investment.

A lot of thought goes into preventing someone from falling overboard at sea. On a sailing vessel with a self-steering system, a lost sailor might go over and not be noticed until the next watch came on deck and found him gone. For this reason, the helmsman is tethered to the boat in such a way that he CANNOT go overboard. On a voyage, there are lines run along both side decks from bow to stern to which the crew are tethered when out of the cockpit. If a sail change is required, another crew member is awakened and called on deck before the watch leaves the cockpit to go forward. Calls of nature are handled in the cockpit using a bucket. Ninety percent of the sailors lost over the side are found with their zipper down.

Our last MOB drill was a bit less dramatic. We’d been out sailing and returned to our mooring in Camden Harbor about 5:00 PM and had just settled down for our evening "sundowners" (a drink before dinner when the work is done and the boat is tied). I’d bent over to retrieve a dropped potato chip when I heard a splash. One of our throwable seat cushions had fallen in and was drifting astern rather quickly.

The crew responded with alacrity!

I started the engine and Kathy went forward to cast off the mooring pendant. We quickly came about and rescued our fallen comrade with the help of a boat hook and returned to our mooring (and our drinks). All’s well that ends well and the fearless crew congratulated themselves for a prompt rescue of "Molly O’Brien".