So… my husband and I were chatting about tether lines over a glass of eggnog, sometime before Christmas. I won’t bore you with the pro and con arguments, which got more creative as the eggnog disappeared from our glasses, but… I thought it would be a great idea to revive the video that Ken Gilstrom, our own Vancouver Chapter Education Watchkeeper, shared on the BCA Facebook page. You see, Ken has had many sailors ask them about their Crew Over Board (COB) prevention method on Voyageur 10.10. Since it is quite difficult to describe accurately Ken made this video, done at the dock because of the difficulty to film it properly while underway. We thought it was quite informative.
Then, a few days ago I ran into this article published in the Practical Boat Owner online magazine [1], about the safety of tether lines. So I thought it would be great to put these two together and hope for some discussion. I think we agree that tether lines are important, and we do have them on out boat, but they have to be set up right for your own boat and they have to be the right length to keep you out of the water should you fall in.
Any other thoughts?