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WE SHOULDN’T BE SURPRISED WHEN THINGS GO WRONG AT SEA, IT’S HOW YOU PREPARE FOR IT THAT COUNTS
Reading Golden Globe skipper Tapio Lehtinen’s account of his rescue in the Indian Ocean by fellow competitor Kirsten Neuschäfer brought back memories of that discomfort you feel after an emergency at sea. The ‘what-ifs’ and ‘if-onlys’ after such an event can be haunting – and I’ve never had to sit in a liferaft while watching my boat sink. I can only imagine the feelings Tapio would have gone through: not just the sense of grief and loss of a place of safety, a home, a much-loved companion in his yacht Asteria – but also, perhaps, the sense of failure.
I’ve learned the hard way that what we do in the aftermath of disasters is what shapes us most. It’s so easy to berate yourself in the moment and waste energy focusing on all the things you did wrong. But this way of thinking only leads us into a downward spiral which can result in more and more problems. The best of us – and Tapio is a great example of this – are able to brush off mistakes and concentrate on finding the solutions, rather than over-thinking the errors of the past. Why is this so important? Because it doesn’t matter how much you prepare for emergencies, there’ll always be surprises.
What I find striking about Tapio’s deconstruction of his event, was how much was ‘unexpected’ beyond the shock discovery of water ingress: the unbelievable pace at which the water was flooding in, and the rushed decisions he had to make afterwards such as choosing the survival suit over the EPIRB, and then the bad luck of discovering a flat battery on his sat phone, its broken antenna, the lack of reading glasses, the slip knot that failed...
The emergencies I’ve experienced have never been neat and tidy. Unfortunately, mistakes are just inevitable.
I’m learning to start recategorising mistakes as ‘expected’. Tapio’s rescue shows that you can be an exceptionally salty seafarer with decades of experience and still make simple errors. Add to that the unpredictability of the environment and it’s almost comical we expect these scenarios to ever be straightforward.
“If you see floorboards floating, do the following: taste the water, begin to bail, source the leak, slow the flow, devise a long-term solution.” I’ve given this safety briefing hundreds of times in the hope that if I say it enough I’ll be able to act in autopilot mode and save mental energy for the unexpected.
In a situation like Tapio’s, where the boat sinks faster than we have time to think, gut instinct is what saves us. When we reali
