Holding On

By Dag Pike

You sit there comfortably in your Captain’s Chair, king of all as you survey from the helm of your yacht. It can be a great feeling. Although the boat is moving about a bit in waves, you feel safe and secure in your comfortable seat. From this position of comfort, do you ever think about how the rest of the crew is coping with the movements of the boat and trying to find somewhere to enjoy the voyage?

Boats move about at sea and there is no escape from that, although things like stabilizers and gyros can help. On slower boats, it is mainly the rolling that can cause discomfort and insecurity. While on planing boats, you will usually find that it is the pounding and pitching in waves that can be a problem.

While you as the skipper can find comfort in your secure seating and in the control of the boat, spare a thought for how your crew is coping. Can they find a comfortable seat and can they hold on securely when they want to move about in the boat? So often the poor old crew is left to their own devices and just wants the boat to stop because life on board can be so uncomfortable, and there really is no need for this.

To a large extent, I blame the boat designers and builders for this situation. Sure, when you go onboard the boat at a boat show it all looks comfortable and designed for easy living. Customers rarely go on board the boat at sea, and even more rarely when the boat is moving about in waves. Even if you do, you feel comfortable because you are at the secure helm seat. And yet, these are the conditions that you will have to face on most voyages. So why don’t we give a bit more thought to how the rest of the crew can cope and where do the designers go wrong?

Seating

That settee seating that looks so inviting and comfortable in harbor can be anything but secure out at sea. It is all because there is nothing there to hold onto when the boat is moving. Often you might find that the seat you are sitting in is not secured to the deck so when it gets rough both you and the seat can be moving. You end up grabbing what you can to hold onto which is not the way to enjoy a voyage, and perhaps you wonder why people find an excuse not to come back from a trip when you invite them.

Handholds should be a vital part of any boat and you need them not only so people can hold on when seated but also when they want to move about in the boat. Trying to go from one end of the saloon to the other with no handholds can be fraught but how many boats have useful handholds. Some of the more thoughtful designers might attach handholds to the deckhead so you have something there which can work if you are tall. Others might add a raised edge or a lip to tables and furniture that can stop anything on the table sliding off but also to provide some sort of handhold. 

Duty of Care

In this modern age, when the first thing anybody does when they get injured is to look for someone to sue, this is where you as the owner or skipper could be in the firing line. As the skipper, you have a ‘duty of care’ to the rest of the crew and this gives you some responsibility for their safety and security. The lack of any provision for handholds on the boat could make you liable if there is any injury which can be a worrying thought. Your insurance may cover you but much better not to get into that situation and to try and give your crew at least some measure of security so that they can really enjoy the voyage.

Areas of Concern

There are two areas that really worry me when I look at many modern boats. One is on modern sports boats where the sparkling performance can be both exciting but also potentially dangerous. Drivers and front-seat passengers may have nice secure bucket seats that will help to locate the occupants in the boat but it is those people sitting on the back seat that I would worry about. Usually, they have nothing to hold on to and have to sit there and bounce with the boat. Then you unexpectedly hit the wash of a passing boat and these passengers can become very vulnerable. 

I know from the many expert witness jobs I do involving accidents at sea that the risk of personal injury is never very far away on a fast boat. Some handholds low down on the front of the seat can provide one solution so that at least there is something to grab and the people sitting at the end of the seat may also have handholds on the side of the boat. These are not ideal solutions but they can provide some measure of protection.

The second area that worries me is the heavy sliding doors at the rear end of the saloon leading out into the cockpit. These doors work fine in the harbor as they slide open. But if the boat is rolling at sea, then you can find yourself having to hold the whole weight of the door when you try to open it and there is nothing for you to hold on to. A simple handhold on the fixed part of the door frame would at least give you a chance to control the heavyweight of the door as you try to open it. These are the sort of simple solutions that designers should strive for.

I was asked by one major European boat builder to have a look at a new design and comment on the security. It was not too much of a challenge to come up with some simple solutions that could be built into the boat and these transformed the safety and security. It is quite easy to build solutions into a new design but it can be a much greater challenge to try and fit suitable handholds once the boat is built which is why you as the skipper or owner might find it hard to come up with a suitable solution. But do not use this as an excuse because I am sure you want your passengers to enjoy the voyage just as much as you do so give some thought to handholds and where and how you could fit them. You can’t stop boats from moving at sea but you can help your passengers to cope with this in a degree of comfort.