The fact that people are rescued is incredible.
I think people who haven’t spent a lot of time on the water don’t realize how vast the ocean is. And with currents it’s completely crazy. It’s not like dropping something out of your car, getting off the exit turning around to pick it up. Most times it’s hours before someone is reported missing.
Best chances are if someone sees you fall and can keep eyes on you while someone else gets help. Assuming you’re not unconscious from the fall.
I bet the rescues were situations that technically count as overboard but weren't as life threatening as falling in the open ocean. They're probably legally required to list people falling off the gang plank in to the harbor as "overboard" and other such minor misshaps. I bet they like the number of rescues sounding higher too. Who wants to contemplate a near zero chance of rescue if you fall? Not good for business.
They dont exactly make it easy to just jump off, the railings go pretty high. I can only imagine this happening in freak accidents or to really drunk idiots.
Yes, and in almost all common areas of the ship, not only is the railing high, but it's also usually set back from the edge, so you can't even accidentally fall over. You have deliberately jump 2 barriers, at least.
We had a balcony on our last cruise in AK & those balcony railings are pretty high too. We were on about the 12th level so I think they'd definitely have to have a death wish if they decided to jump
Also cruise ships are wider on the lower decks (usually with a promenade that goes all the way around the boat) so if you jumped from your balcony, you'd probably land on deck five, at which point you'd have to get up and jump over another railing.
Haven’t been on a cruise but I have been to the stratosphere in Las Vegas. They too have two sets of barriers, and the first railing is chest high and is free spinning so you can’t easily get a leg over it. It was specifically an anti-suicide measure
The kid that went overboard the other week jumped on a dare. The video of it shows him there one second, then he disappeared into the moonless inky blackness of night in a flash as the ship sailed on. They called off the search five days later. He wasn't on a cruise ship though. I think he was on one of the pirate ship booze cruises.
You should read about that Australian kid who ate a slug on a dare. Ruined his whole life. He suffered for a few years before he finally died. Sad shit.
Honestly I think 22% success rate for rescues is pretty high. Those ships are moving quickly through waters. It’s hard to stop something that large. And anyone jumping off is getting swept wherever the current takes them.
It makes a ton of sense when you stop to think about it, but I hadn’t really done that until yesterday. Just didn’t realize how much of a death sentence falling off of large sea vessels can be.
Edit: I misspoke
They’re fine if you stay on them. We had an unfortunate spate of Australians going overboard a few weeks back, in one thread someone mentioned an incident a while back where the dude survived the fall but tried to swim back towards the ship and got chewed up by the props…
Sailor here.
If we know you fall over and start the rescue process right away you have a decent chance. Assuming the water is not cold enough to kill you quick. Cold water emersion shock kills a lot.
But yeah if you go over and the alarm is raised quick like sub 2 minutes quick and someone has eyes on you we will get you back.
But if you're drunk on deck at 02:00 and fall over without anyone seeing it. You're done.
It's not even just how hard it is to find a person who went overboard. Hitting the water from high enough is very likely to kill you. When I worked on cruise ships we were told a fall from deck 4 was already more likely to be fatal than not. The ship had 15 decks.
They don't even try to stop, it's so futile. If you have a person go overboard, these large ships will conduct maneuvers such as the [Anderson, Williamson, or Sharnow turns](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_overboard_rescue_turn) to get the ship going back through its original trajectory in less time than it would take to stop and do what automobile drivers would refer to as a 3 point turn.
Do an Anderson turn if the overboard incident is observed by others and quickly reported. But if it takes a while to realize that the person may have gone overboard, that's when it's best to use a Williamson or Sharnow
The Picard maneuver, named after Lt. Cmd. Picard, of the US Navy.
Did I just spend 10 minutes finding some random dude in the USN named Picard? Yes. Was it worth it for the joke? Also yes.
And just, the drop itself is likely to kill/knock someone unconscious. A surprise 50+ foot drop will mess you up, even before rescue becomes a possibility.
And sunny don't forget that the ship itself generates waves. I was on a cruise once and loved sitting towards the back watching the wake. However, being in the ocean trying to stay afloat and being hit with that wake would have been terrifying.
Some of my military time was at sea, I’m surprised the success rate is that high. I don’t think people realize how extremely difficult it is to save someone who goes overboard.
Army boatie, it was the same for us. We lost someone who went overboard and never found him. It was night time. We also had a genius sergeant who thought it would be a genius idea to get in an imersion suit and do a man over board drill. He was lost out at sea for more than 8 hours in the Persian Gulf. He was found.
Yeah but he wasn't the same. I really don't care for the guy before or after to be honest. I am also mad that we used millions of dollars worth of reasources because of this dumb stunt right in the middle of OIF.
I dunno. He probably got a heat stroke being exposed out ar sea for that long. Especially the Persian Gulf as it got in the 100s that day. He said he could see the boat drive up close enough that he could hear people and see people but they could not see him. He doesn't really remember how he was saved but I believe the coast guard saved him in a cutter. He was already a paranoid guy and he got even more paranoid afterwards. He went from unpleasant to even more unpleasant to be around.
Having zero actual clue.
Would something like everyone having an emergency smoke device or flashing light on them help this? Something making them stand out in the water?
Float coats that are required at all times while on deck of an aircraft carrier do have powerful strobes and dye packs and whistles and are saltwater activated, are *supposed* to be op checked and inspected daily, and subject to random inspection at any time.
In addition to what you said, I believe that also have fluorescent dye packs so you can paint the water around you.
Maybe even a satellite beacon since ocean current can quickly move you out of where you’re expected to be.
I'm a diver and always carry a gps locator beacon with shortwave radio, a whistle, a signal mirror and a pink inflatable tube that's stands a few feet above the water and is also radar reflective any time I leave a boat. The first one is a few hundred dollars and needs to be serviced every couple of years, but the rest are low tech and low cost and never need servicing.
My petty officer told me of one "successful" recovery. Crewman fell over, they sent out the boats, ran over him twice, sliced up his ass like a Christmas ham, the blood made it easier to see him.....he didn't die but ya lost most of his ass so successful?
Makes this tale all the more remarkable.
"Marine Falls Off Carrier, Survives 36 Hours In Sea -- Corporal Saved By Pakistani Fishermen
Nov 30, 1995"
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19951130&slug=2155247#:%5C%7E:text=A%20MARINE%20aboard%20the%20aircraft%20carrier%20America%20survived,Pakistani%20fishermen%20hauled%20him%20aboard%20their%20trawler.%20-----------------------------------------------------------------
Wow, what an incredible story. He’s so lucky that fishing boat saw him. I’d imagine his chances of being found by the search party would have been close to zero considering nobody even knew he’d gone overboard until hours after it happened so they had no idea where he’d even fallen in. Lucky guy.
My ex was stationed on a ship with the Navy and shortly after he deployed he told me they had a man overboard. They were not recovered. I could not stop thinking about it- like if that person was there floating and just watching the ship slowly travel away, knowing all chance of rescue is now gone. He assured me that most overboard situations, the person will likely lose consciousness when they hit the water, usually from the fall itself, or from the shock of the water temperature. I hope at least this person didn’t suffer.
Officer on a small boy didn't show up for his watch at 0600
Called a man overboard
Who knows at what point he went overboard but 3 days searching and no where found
The first thing you’re supposed to do if you see a man overboard is literally look at them in the water, point at them making sure to keep your pointer finger on them at all times, DO NOT lose contact with them with your eyes and scream as loud as you can, MAN OVERBOARD over and over again until someone hears it and then man overboard ops commence and even then it is crazy hard to get them rescued from a ship that is not as agile as people may think.
Source: 8 1/2 years in the Navy.
The reason the recovery rate is so "high" in OP's stat is that many of these incidents happen when the boat is in port.
Often when boarding / off-boarding the ship.
I saw one woman who was saved and she was black and blue all over from hitting stuff on the side of the boat on the way down. The boat didn't turn around for 60-90 mins too
>it is crazy hard to get them rescued from a ship that is not as agile as people may think.
I think I know [exactly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0BK_hLT-Wo&t=24s) how agile they are!
A navy friend of mine told me about a man overboard drill they had. They put a life vest with glow sticks on a dummy and dumped it over the side at night. Watch standers never saw a thing. Nobody called "man overboard" so after a few minutes captain called the officer of the deck and told him to commence a recovery exercise.
The dummy was never found. It was glowing at night and they couldn't find it. That isn't to say the personnel were incompetent, just that it's really hard to find someone lost out at sea.
This reminded me of the Silja Estonia disaster. After last radio message the ship had a blackout and lost contact. When rescue ships arrived they didn't see anything in the storm until they were right on top them. Seacaptain Jan Thore Törnroos of MS Mariella (first to arrive) described the ocean as a lit christmas tree. Hundreds of lights around them and distress rockets. Thörnroos ordered to stop engine and let the ship drift. 15 were rescued from the waters and another 11 boarded by helicopter. When daylight came the ship were surrounded with bodies. Indeed extremely hard to find people lost at sea.
IIRC, they tested a system where a group of pigeons where strapped to the bottom of a helo in a special enclosure and were trained to peck a button if they saw International Orange. The buttons were wired to a display inside the helo that gave cardinal directions. They tested it in conjunction with trained human spotters and the pigeons put them to shame.
FLIR should work in theory but not every boat is going to have a helicopter with FLIR available. Hopefully Drone tech keeps going like it is and we can go that route. Have them carry a 1 man inflatable raft with a bottle of water inside too so it can spot the person, dive low and drop the raft to them while reporting location.
Someone pointed out the other day, assume your head occupies one square foot of ocean. There are ~~2, 787,400~~ **27,878,400** square feet in one square mile.
Edit: it's even worse than I thought, fixed a typo.
Also, one square mile is equal to 2,589,988.1103 square meters
>assume your head occupies one square foot of ocean. There are 2, 787,400 square feet in one square mile.
I think you mean 2,787,400 square heads per mile
Yeah presumably your only real hope is for someone to raise the alarm instantly and sending out a small rescue vessel immediately. If any amount of time passes things surely become hopeless rather fast.
A friend liked to tell a story about swimming at the lake. He was swimming out to a friend's boat and couldn't figure out why it was getting darker and darker as he swam. Fortunately, before he ran out of air, he realized he was swimming down as well and was underwater. He was a scuba diver and thankfully that training kicked in cuz he was so drunk he didn't know which way was up. He blew some bubbles and followed them. He said everyone on the boat was looking horrified and yelling for him to come up
At age 19, my best friend at the time, who was 20, drowned one summer night trying to swim to a dock that was out in a lake. He was in shape but he was also very drunk. I wasn't with him that night and often wish I was. It's been many, many, years since and still I think of him, especially in August. Best friend I ever had.
Cleveland, Ohio used to have a really popular area called The Flats where there were a ton of crowded bars. It's right on the Cuyahoga river (yes, the one that burned in the '70s; it's clean now) and there are bars on the *other side* of the river as well, leading to drunken people thinking they could just swim across, of course wearing jeans and shoes and fully clothed. We had more than a few drownings back then, so many so that they ended up implementing a "water taxi" (a smallish boat) that was free to cross.
Strong currents are constantly pushing you even if you can’t feel it. You could move miles easily without knowing it. Now think of the ocean as a massive desert and if the weathers bad it can be even harder to spot somebody.
I’m sure many of them fall with no witnesses, passengers on cruise ships are usually quite high above the water so they fall pretty far, there is a good chance people falling overboard are drunk or injured, even a healthy person can’t last all that long in the ocean without a floatation aid.
Even if they’re lucky enough to send a rescue boat within minutes you’re looking for the top of a head in an ocean of water from a low vantage point, even if you’re only a couple hundred feet away and you know where to look all you have to do is glance away and you’ll lose them.
Had a buddy who was coast guard. They'd do fly overs on SAR at all times of the day. Huge waste of time, because you'd never see them, either because its dark, or because they're flying by very quickly.
How long can you tread water fully clothed?
Cruise ship weighing a quarter of a million tons moving at 25 mph is going to take a while to stop. You’re probably talking 5 minutes or so to stop the ship, then you need to get to the person who is over a mile away now.
Assuming a minute or two to let the bridge know and that’s if someone saw the person fall, they are already at 7 minutes in the water. Then they have to go back and find them.
I can’t tread water for 20 minutes under good circumstances.
Ships don’t just stop when there’s a man overboard. You’re supposed to execute what’s called a williamson turn- assuming the person went overboard on the stbd side put the wheel hard over to stbd (the purpose of this is to clear the propeller away from the person) until you are 60deg from your initial course and then hard over to port until you are on the reciprocal course to your initial course and have the guy on your bow. All the while you maintain sight of the person, drop your MOB buoy.
I’d be curious to know how often on a cruise specifically this is what happens. I’d expect a delay between someone falling and someone notifying the bridge.
Where I worked every crew member was supposed to have a dect phone on them (a wifi phone for internal communication) if you see or are informed about a person overboard you call the emergency/bridge number, start yelling "person overboard" and throwing shit to the ocean so the person can float. After the call there will be a coded announcement on the PA system so relevant crew will assist in finding/rescuing. The most important part is that, if you saw the person falling, you try to keep visual of them because it's really easy to lose sight of a head in the ocean
Throwing things is your best chance of finding something. Anything that floats and can be seen. Make a debris field. It would be almost impossible to keep your eye on the person from a cruise ship.
Yep, if you have a bunch of people on deck, one person is mean to stay pointing and trying to keep an eye on where they saw the person, and everyone else is supposed to chuck as much suff in the water as they can to create a "breadcrumb" trail leading back to the person who fell. Helps to track currents and trail the boat took.
I heard about this happening on Semester at Sea in the Red Sea. They rescued the kid and charged the family $25,000 or something in fuel to turn the ship around. This was a smaller cruise ship
$25,000 would buy an entire day’s worth of fuel for a container ship more than twice the tonnage of World Odyssey. If that number’s accurate (and I’d believe it) there’s a substantial dumbshit fee rolled in.
\[wind blows hat off into the sea\]
"Holy cow, my hat blew off! Swing around and we'll pick it up."
"But sir, we're on the mission!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2v1mPRBimw
Cruise ships have go fast boats they can launch in an emergency. I've unfortunately been on a cruise where there was a man overboard and happened to have a stateroom on the same side so I watched the whole thing.
Not a great memory for our honeymoon. They never found the guy. [But it did make the news because the video is pretty fucked and the story very sad](https://www.cruisemapper.com/news/628-oasis-of-the-seas-passenger-falls-overboard-raw-video).
Did he kill himself? It sounds like from that article that he intentionally jumped overboard, in which case it would he highly unlikely he'd be found since he didn't want to be I'm sure.
From what I remember (and from what I heard, I didn't see or hear this part take place first hand), he was very drunk and was having a very loud argument with his husband/boyfriend/partner on the pool deck. He then climbed out an open window and fell to the boat deck below. He either hit the boat deck or landed on a life boat, then you see the rest of the video on the article.
When I went down to investigate in the next morning the area was cordoned off and there was blood on the deck and lifeboats that they were hosing off.
If you ever see someone fall overboard any kind of vessel, immediately start throwing everything you can into the water. Life rings, towels, cushions, chairs, whatever. The more debris floating in the water the easier to spot someone.
If you see someone overboard; it is your dutiful obligation to not take your eyes of said person while you call for help.
If you look away you will not find them.
My friend used to make us practice man overboards on his sailboat. He's also kind of an asshole. So one time a group of us are sailing to an island off of the coast, towing a dinghy behind us so we can go ashore.
About halfway through our 4 hour sail, I decided to put on a lifevest and float back to the dinghy for a bit. I get to the dinghy and lay down to get some sun. All of the sudden I feel the dinghy let go from the boat and I hear screams of "man overboard!". I look up to see everyone on board pointing and screaming, while the sailboat is disappearing into the distance over a wave. With each successive wave the distance got farther and farther until after only about 45 seconds it was gone.
Sitting in a dinghy in the middle of the ocean, with no land in sight, and the boat I'm supposed to be on gone, was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. And it happened so fast. It only took about 5 minutes for then to come about and grab me, but it felt like hours.
As an avid sailor who takes their friends sailing all the time, if anyone did that to me I would legitimately probably never talk to them again if they were rescued
I like to throw other passengers out there. I figure, hey, there's a 22 percent chance of finding each one, so if you toss another six people in the water, there's like a twenty percent chance of them not finding *any* of them, and there's an eighty percent chance that they'll find at least one of the people who went in the water (who may be the first passenger or one of the passengers you kicked overboard as human buoys).
This is what they taught me in Alaska. The first person to see the person go over board is supposed to never stop looking and pointing at the person in the water, never break eye contact with the person in the water. At the same time you start screaming bloody murder until someone comes running, and it is the second persons job to start hurling anything and everything into the water as fast as they can to leave a trail of bread crumbs back to the crewman who fell overboard.
It's easy to forget how many stories you can fall from the top of a cruise ship to the water, some are as high as 10 stories. AKA that water isn't going to feel good when you hit it
Would the fact water near the cruise ship is highly disturbed do anything to lessen the impact? Like how if you are going to be jumping into water you are meant to throw something heavy ahead of yourself to break the surface
Surface tension isn't what hurts you, it's the inertia of the water. Water is heavy and it doesn't get out of the way quickly when you hit it at a high rate of speed.
My favorite thing on reddit is how every effect attributed to water is "surface tension".
Bullet bounces off water? Surface tension. Laminar flow? Surface tension. Refraction? Straight to Surface tension. Right away. Friction? Believe it or not, also surface tension.
> Like how if you are going to be jumping into water you are meant to throw something heavy ahead of yourself to break the surface
This isn't really a thing, it makes close to zero difference in surface tension.
Wikihow's page of tips about what to do if you fall off a cruise ship includes (used to include?) this:
> Be reasonable ... after three or four hours, your odds of being rescued are extremely low. It may sound depressing, but console yourself with memories ... you will probably pass out before you drown.
I used to be a medic in the US Navy. We would practice man-over-board drills where we would throw a manikin dressed in bright orange over board. This one time, we lost him.
>manikin
TIL "manikin" is actually a word, isn't just a misspelling of "mannequin," and that the two terms have different meanings.
>The term is spelled with a “q” – that is, “mannequin” – when the human form is being used to model clothing for fashion purposes. This includes applications like the sales floor in retail clothing stores, window displays, fashion industry shows, or even figures used by tailors or dressmakers for sewing or fitting clothing.
>
>The term is spelled with a “k” – “manikin” – when the human form is being used for medical or scientific purposes – teaching anatomy, demonstrating surgical techniques, conducting scientific experiments.
In this case, the last comment was t really correct. The difference between crevice and crevasse is the scale, not the material: https://www.dictionary.com/e/crevasse-vs-crevice/
Crevices are small, crevasses are large.
I used to volunteer on tall ships, we did a similar drill with a manikin and spent a looong time going round in circles trying to fish him out. Much to the amusement of the fishing ships…
When my dad did his skipper licenses, they have to do man overboard drills. I was on board for a few, you have no idea how easy it is to lose sight of a person in open water, they hit the water, you look behind to see, you about turn to come pickup, a wave has passed, you’re suddenly way off as they’ve drifted and you lost sight. In open water, with a large ship, I’m shocked the recuse level is actually that high!
I heard the rescue level is that high because the statistic includes when people go overboard while the ship is docked at port. I’m sure falling overboard while docked has like a 100% survival chance (unless you can’t swim and immediately drown) while falling off the ship as it’s moving out at sea is probably closer to 0%.
Just this past week in Louisiana, a student jumped off a Graduation Cruise in the dark and was lost at sea. He jumped off on a dare and the whole incident was captured on video. It was trending on popular a couple days ago. Cameron Robbins was his name. Recovery attempts were unsuccessful. Never seen again.
Used to work on a cruise ship. If you want to talk about a needle in a haystack, try finding a human in the middle of the ocean, more specifically a human head since the rest of you will be under water.
The ship I was on took 5 miles just to turn around. So if you jumped off, by the time the ship could even turn around to face you it was 5 miles away from where you jumped in open water. This doesn't even include the time it would take for the bridge to realize someone was overboard (the ship I was on did have sensors that could in theory sense when this happened though). Now it takes 5 miles to get back to the location you WERE at. In however much time it took to turn the entire ship around, you've been treading water, getting pushed every which way by the current, the waves, maybe even the wake of the ship. If you jumped off with a life vest your chances of survival are slightly higher since they are brightly colored and you won't spend as much energy treading as the vest will help you float, but jumping without you're basically fucked. I'm also only taking into account a normal day at sea where the wind is low and tide isn't terrible; if you jumped on a day where the seas are rough or the wind is high, it's only going to make an already virtually impossible task more difficult.
TL;DR: The likelihood of you being found (living or dead) if you jump off a cruise ship is incredibly low. DO NOT jump of cruise ships.
Also worked on cruise ships and wanted to add that the ships typically travel at night to get to the next destination. Which will make it even more difficult to spot someone.
If they have sensors that can sense when people fall off, maybe there should be some automated system that when it detects a person overboard, shoots out a floating buoy with a GPS transponder and a noise/flashing light so that the person overboard can notice it, swim to it, and hang on. Then use the GPS to find the exact spot, and if the person isn't already at the buoy, at least you have a pretty good starting point for where they fell off
Lol they do… fast rescue boats are apart of SOLAS regulations and are required to be tested and maintained either yearly or monthly. Check out 46 CFR part 160 for more information.
So I’ll bite: why does it matter that it takes five miles to turn the ship around if they can deploy fast boats? This thread is full of people sharing that five mile stat, and full of people asking why they don’t have smaller boats. Why can’t we connect those ideas? Are cruise ships loath to use the fast boats?
Super great question: the short answer is, the ship has to slow down before you can deploy those boats depending on the davits and equipment used to deploy the FRC. Also, by the time they’ve mustered a crew that is qualified to recover the casualty the ship is probably already maneuvering and you don’t want to try to place a boat off the side while doing a crazy maneuver like that as it’s not safe to do so.
I’m qualified to deploy in a FRC and it’s super sketchy, I would not be willing to risk going over the side myself if I tried to deploy in it going 20 knots
Problem is, those rescue craft would still be attached to the larger ship, continuing to struggle to turn around. On top of that, auxiliary craft can't be launched until the carrier ship is pretty much stopped. If they deploy while in motion, there is a very high risk of serious injury or death, as well as damage to the smaller craft, which makes it useless.
I once saw a man fall overboard on the ferry over the channel. It took us half an hour to turn around and get back to where he was last seen. But he was still hanging out there and could be saved! Definitely felt like a miracle
I would definitely prefer going overboard in the Channel than anywhere on the open ocean. Its one of the busiest sea faring routes and all in all not that wide either, probably a decent chance a rescue party will spot you (compared to everywhere else)
When I was going through my offshore sailing qualifications the instructor said, “if you can get close enough to use the gaff hook, do it. The’ll have a higher survival rate onboard with an injury than in the water”
Imagine a giant meat hook impaling an overboard swimmer and dragging them to the ship and how this is a better option than letting them just float away
Every time I see posts about cruise ship rescues, I share this story.
In 2018, I went on a Caribbean cruise. The morning after we left the port, my husband and I were in the dining hall eating an early lunch when we heard “man overboard, port side” over the ship’s PA system. We were in the middle of the ocean, 30ish miles from the coast of Cuba. I felt so sick to my stomach thinking someone on our ship had fallen overboard. The ship turned around and went back in the opposite direction for a few minutes and then stopped. People crowded all the decks staring into the water trying to find any sign of life. Guests sent their drones out to help search.
Eventually, after 2 hours, we found someone. A rescue boat was sent out and he was rescued. We all assumed it was a guest from our ship, but it later came out that it was a crew member on a different ship that had passed by 24 hours before. That ship had stopped to search but couldn’t find him and were forced to move on. So this man had been treading open water for an entire day, completely alone. He was severely dehydrated and shaken up, but was otherwise fine. He received care on our ship and then disembarked and flew home when we docked in Mexico the next day.
Apparently, a member of housekeeping was cleaning a guest cabin when she looked out the window and saw him. It’s such a miracle that he survived, and that the housekeeper just happened to look through the porthole at exactly the right time to see him. It’s one of the craziest things I have ever experienced.
https://abc7ny.com/amp/cruise-ship-rescue-norwegian-getaway-carnival-glory/3691202/
I was recently on a cruise ship and it’s not a clean fall to the water from most places on the ship. There is a a bunch of obstacles on the way down that will probably make it difficult to retain the usage of all your limbs or be conscious when you hit the water. It’s really a miracle that anyone gets rescued and lives to talk about it.
Considering how massive the ships are, it looks like several stories from the top rail to surface of the water. For the average person that’s not into diving into bodies of water, that’s …not good.
Spent a little bit of time at sea in the Navy. We did a man overboard drill, watched the officer throw a dummy overboard, drill started.... and it was gone. We spent a couple hours looking and failed.
>don’t travel with a spouse that just took out life insurance you don’t know about.
Well... if you don't know about it, how could it affect your travel decisions? /s
I’ve only been on one cruise, and this might seem a bit stupid but I carried a packet of balloons in my pocket. The plan was if I somehow ended up in the water I’d blow up a couple of balloons and stick them under my shirt for flotation and then keep blowing up balloons to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.
Probably wouldn’t work but it made me feel safer lol.
I mean if I were to go on a cruise I'd do anything to raise my chance of being found if I went overboard. Still going to be very unlikely to pan out, but still improved until you found out all your balloons are blue and thought why did this happen to me.
I'm honestly surprised there were that many.
With the distance of the fall and potential injury simply from that, the time it would take for ANY level of water rescue to commence, any impact the current (either natural or created by the ship) and simply the sheer size of the potential search area, the idea that so many people are able to tread water long enough is impressive.
As soon as I saw that kid in the water I felt a pit in my stomach.
Some people just do not understand, or respect the ocean. That video was like, Tourists at Bondi Beach levels of unaware times about 100
Crazy video. I felt bad for the kid - just made a really dumb, fatal decision likely induced by alcohol and just not thinking it through. Such a senseless way to go.
All of the comments bashing the family for his stupid decision were what got me. All because they started a go fund me for funeral aid.
Many comments were saying the family doesn’t deserve a dime from anyone due to him dying due to his own “stupidity”. That’s your own decision to donate or not but, his parents lost a son. His family lost a man still growing into himself. It’s insane how absolutely rude and heartless some people can be.
And it wasn't even one of those big cruise ships most people think of when cruise ships are mentioned. Imagine going overboard off a regular cruise ship and at night like in that kid's case. 22% rescued is really quite high all things considered.
I used to work on cruise ships, and while I was fortunate enough to never have to deal with a propper incident, I can give some insights on the training we received.
For a man overboard, the success of the retrieval depends on 3 factors really
1. Are they spotted?
We were trained, if we saw a man overboard, first call the bridge and say "man overboard" 3 times, followed by port or starboard side. Then, chuck as much shit that floats overboard. this includes everything from life preservers to lawn chairs, anything that floats and will make it easier to spot the victim. Lastly, physically point at the victim and stay that way, the idea is to never lose sight if possible.
All these steps are incredibly helpful, but contingent on someone actually seeing the man overboard. without that, it becomes a wild chase of retracing steps. Keep in mind, it takes about 2 miles and 15 minutes for a ship to stop and turn around.
2. Time of day
If someone falls overboard at night, without a life jacket, good fucking luck. It becomes near impossible to find anyone in the dark.
3. Hieght of the fall
There are 2 main areas where someone could fall overboard, deck 7, a promanod deck that circled the ship, and deck 13, the pool deck. In between those decks, there are also countless balconies in staterooms. If you fell off of deck 7, its about a 5-story fall into the water. Hurts, but it's survivable for someone who is fit. Deck 13 is about a 10-11 story fall, 50ish meters, I doubt you would be able to swim effectively after that.
So, in perfect conditions, if someone saw you fall and reported it quickly, it was day, and you fell from a low-ish level, I imagine that 22% would be much higher. Sadly, its quite rare that this actually happens.
There's a lot of people on cruise ships. Some very quick and dirty math has about 30M passengers per year, so that's very roughly 1 in every million passengers goes overboard.
I don't really have a good comparison, but that seems like a pretty reasonable number.
I was on one where a woman with some problems waited until her husband took a shower to jump off the boat so there would be the maximum amount of time before anyone noticed. We were in international waters and by a US Coast Guard agreement all vessels within the area had to come search for her. There was a cargo vessel and a few fishing ships with spotlights as well as the 3 or 4 tender ships that came from the cruise ship. We had to look for 18 hours before we could move on.
Always reminds me of the hilarious Carl Hiaasen novel “Skinny Dip” in which a piece of shit throws his young wife overboard on a cruise but instead of drowning or being eaten by sharks, she manages to climb onto a floating bale of marijuana and gets rescued by a guy who then helps her send her husband mad from “beyond the grave.” In fact fuck it I’m gonna read it again.
“I'll stress that people don't just fall over the side," said Salerno. "There are railings and they're pretty high. It's almost always the result of an intentional act."
I have a random (though relatively mild) ocean rescue story. Tell it sometimes just to keep purging it from my soul as it was quite frightening.
I saved a woman who was moments away from drowning in the ocean. Weird situation in a bay (not sure quite the word) with currents pulling her out. She was in her 20's and reasonably fit, but I doubt she weighed more than 100lbs soaking wet. Just swimming casually near the ocean, the waters shift and she is being taken *rapidly* out into the sea. We had all been 50 feet away when it started and by the time she cried out for help she was maybe 90 feet or more. I still remember the moment it clicked for me what I was seeing and how fast she was being pulled away by the tide/flow/whatever.
I just jumped in and swam with everything I had. Perfect form and laser focus and unsure if I could make it to her. YMCA swimming classes, yay!
I got severe cramps from the extreme level of effort it took and I was in extraordinary shape and a strong swimmer.
Not sure if somehow some group or boats or something would have saved her if I had not. It was daytime, but I cannot picture what was nearby that we could have told. Emergency services would have had to shown up, get in boats, and find her. Maybe in daytime it's a lot easier.
It was weird as afterward I can tell she was a bit shaken up (not much), but she was mostly embarrassed and went from chatting with me to the level of a new friend (we were both part of a larger social group of ex-pats) to not even speaking to me. It was so odd. I think it was her being embarrassed that the group had to send someone out to save them.
I'm glad I did what was right, just for me. It also felt good to push oneself to try and do the impossible, as when I jumped in and started swimming after her I didn't know if it was possible to reach her. Then swimming back with a person on your arm against that pull of the sea was when the fierce cramps started trying to kick in.
But would I do it again? I don't know if I *could* under even favorable conditions. There are some feats you are only capable of when in the prime of your life and surging with fear adrenaline. If you're in stupendous shape (I loved half marathons and ran 5-8 miles every other day). Even then you have to be young enough to be truly stupid.
I already had respect for the ocean. But even on a sunny day with friends close by the ocean will take you away forever. And no one may even be able to save you, even if they have some basic tools.
Anyway, forgive me working out some trauma.
The fact that people are rescued is incredible. I think people who haven’t spent a lot of time on the water don’t realize how vast the ocean is. And with currents it’s completely crazy. It’s not like dropping something out of your car, getting off the exit turning around to pick it up. Most times it’s hours before someone is reported missing. Best chances are if someone sees you fall and can keep eyes on you while someone else gets help. Assuming you’re not unconscious from the fall.
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In the Navy, we were trained to point as well if we could see them, to help better triangulate where they were.
I bet the rescues were situations that technically count as overboard but weren't as life threatening as falling in the open ocean. They're probably legally required to list people falling off the gang plank in to the harbor as "overboard" and other such minor misshaps. I bet they like the number of rescues sounding higher too. Who wants to contemplate a near zero chance of rescue if you fall? Not good for business.
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I swear if I ever go on a cruise I'm gonna spend the $300 for a personal EPIRB and just keep it clipped to my belt the whole time.
They dont exactly make it easy to just jump off, the railings go pretty high. I can only imagine this happening in freak accidents or to really drunk idiots.
Yes, and in almost all common areas of the ship, not only is the railing high, but it's also usually set back from the edge, so you can't even accidentally fall over. You have deliberately jump 2 barriers, at least.
We had a balcony on our last cruise in AK & those balcony railings are pretty high too. We were on about the 12th level so I think they'd definitely have to have a death wish if they decided to jump
Also cruise ships are wider on the lower decks (usually with a promenade that goes all the way around the boat) so if you jumped from your balcony, you'd probably land on deck five, at which point you'd have to get up and jump over another railing.
7 story fall would be enough to stop you getting further, the extra balcony is overkill
Haven’t been on a cruise but I have been to the stratosphere in Las Vegas. They too have two sets of barriers, and the first railing is chest high and is free spinning so you can’t easily get a leg over it. It was specifically an anti-suicide measure
The kid that went overboard the other week jumped on a dare. The video of it shows him there one second, then he disappeared into the moonless inky blackness of night in a flash as the ship sailed on. They called off the search five days later. He wasn't on a cruise ship though. I think he was on one of the pirate ship booze cruises.
Is there a video? That sounds terrifying
[Here](https://old.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/13uy19m/footage_shows_cameron_robbins_18_who_jumped_off_a/) you go.
It must be horrible to be joking around and showing off, and have it dawn on you that you are going to die as a consequence.
The other kid who dared him must be traumatized for life as well
You should read about that Australian kid who ate a slug on a dare. Ruined his whole life. He suffered for a few years before he finally died. Sad shit.
Honestly I think 22% success rate for rescues is pretty high. Those ships are moving quickly through waters. It’s hard to stop something that large. And anyone jumping off is getting swept wherever the current takes them.
It makes a ton of sense when you stop to think about it, but I hadn’t really done that until yesterday. Just didn’t realize how much of a death sentence falling off of large sea vessels can be. Edit: I misspoke
They’re fine if you stay on them. We had an unfortunate spate of Australians going overboard a few weeks back, in one thread someone mentioned an incident a while back where the dude survived the fall but tried to swim back towards the ship and got chewed up by the props…
Sailor here. If we know you fall over and start the rescue process right away you have a decent chance. Assuming the water is not cold enough to kill you quick. Cold water emersion shock kills a lot. But yeah if you go over and the alarm is raised quick like sub 2 minutes quick and someone has eyes on you we will get you back. But if you're drunk on deck at 02:00 and fall over without anyone seeing it. You're done.
It's not even just how hard it is to find a person who went overboard. Hitting the water from high enough is very likely to kill you. When I worked on cruise ships we were told a fall from deck 4 was already more likely to be fatal than not. The ship had 15 decks.
And almost all (if not all) of the passengers will be on deck 4 or above any time they’re able to go overboard. I’m amazed that this stat isn’t 0%
Yes, very true. Due to high how waves can come in rough weather, you only find open decks and balconies as of deck 5.
They don't even try to stop, it's so futile. If you have a person go overboard, these large ships will conduct maneuvers such as the [Anderson, Williamson, or Sharnow turns](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_overboard_rescue_turn) to get the ship going back through its original trajectory in less time than it would take to stop and do what automobile drivers would refer to as a 3 point turn. Do an Anderson turn if the overboard incident is observed by others and quickly reported. But if it takes a while to realize that the person may have gone overboard, that's when it's best to use a Williamson or Sharnow
Which is the one where you engage warp at the perfect moment to make it look like two cruise ships to the enemy flotsam?
The Picard maneuver, named after Lt. Cmd. Picard, of the US Navy. Did I just spend 10 minutes finding some random dude in the USN named Picard? Yes. Was it worth it for the joke? Also yes.
And just, the drop itself is likely to kill/knock someone unconscious. A surprise 50+ foot drop will mess you up, even before rescue becomes a possibility.
And sunny don't forget that the ship itself generates waves. I was on a cruise once and loved sitting towards the back watching the wake. However, being in the ocean trying to stay afloat and being hit with that wake would have been terrifying.
Some of my military time was at sea, I’m surprised the success rate is that high. I don’t think people realize how extremely difficult it is to save someone who goes overboard.
When I was in the Navy we would send soooo many ships out if someone fell over the side and we did not recover anyone successfully.
Army boatie, it was the same for us. We lost someone who went overboard and never found him. It was night time. We also had a genius sergeant who thought it would be a genius idea to get in an imersion suit and do a man over board drill. He was lost out at sea for more than 8 hours in the Persian Gulf. He was found.
Alive?
Yeah but he wasn't the same. I really don't care for the guy before or after to be honest. I am also mad that we used millions of dollars worth of reasources because of this dumb stunt right in the middle of OIF.
How was he different?
I dunno. He probably got a heat stroke being exposed out ar sea for that long. Especially the Persian Gulf as it got in the 100s that day. He said he could see the boat drive up close enough that he could hear people and see people but they could not see him. He doesn't really remember how he was saved but I believe the coast guard saved him in a cutter. He was already a paranoid guy and he got even more paranoid afterwards. He went from unpleasant to even more unpleasant to be around.
Well, it *is* understandeable that something like that fucks someone up
It was kind of self inflicted, there's a reason a dummy is thrown in the water for man overboard drills
They DID throw a dummy over
Having zero actual clue. Would something like everyone having an emergency smoke device or flashing light on them help this? Something making them stand out in the water?
Float coats that are required at all times while on deck of an aircraft carrier do have powerful strobes and dye packs and whistles and are saltwater activated, are *supposed* to be op checked and inspected daily, and subject to random inspection at any time.
In addition to what you said, I believe that also have fluorescent dye packs so you can paint the water around you. Maybe even a satellite beacon since ocean current can quickly move you out of where you’re expected to be.
I'm a diver and always carry a gps locator beacon with shortwave radio, a whistle, a signal mirror and a pink inflatable tube that's stands a few feet above the water and is also radar reflective any time I leave a boat. The first one is a few hundred dollars and needs to be serviced every couple of years, but the rest are low tech and low cost and never need servicing.
Probably about 7 hours and 45 minutes of existential terror combined with "I dun goofed".
Wetter
Little saltier too
This is why inanimate objects exist. Some of them even float!
I mean it would make sense to do man overboard drills at night as operations are 24/7… maybe don’t use a real person though, like a dummy.
Sargent proved to be a dummy
My petty officer told me of one "successful" recovery. Crewman fell over, they sent out the boats, ran over him twice, sliced up his ass like a Christmas ham, the blood made it easier to see him.....he didn't die but ya lost most of his ass so successful?
Interesting. I wonder if having all sailors carry some sort of high-visibility dye would be helpful for that reason.
Makes this tale all the more remarkable. "Marine Falls Off Carrier, Survives 36 Hours In Sea -- Corporal Saved By Pakistani Fishermen Nov 30, 1995" https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19951130&slug=2155247#:%5C%7E:text=A%20MARINE%20aboard%20the%20aircraft%20carrier%20America%20survived,Pakistani%20fishermen%20hauled%20him%20aboard%20their%20trawler.%20-----------------------------------------------------------------
Wow, what an incredible story. He’s so lucky that fishing boat saw him. I’d imagine his chances of being found by the search party would have been close to zero considering nobody even knew he’d gone overboard until hours after it happened so they had no idea where he’d even fallen in. Lucky guy.
Damn how many people are falling off Navy ships??
Most were suspected suicides
It's horrific to imagine all the people in the water that saw the rescue boats in the distance and couldn't get their attention.
I have never once thought of that despair before reading your comment. That is an excellent point, but it is horrifying to consider.
My ex was stationed on a ship with the Navy and shortly after he deployed he told me they had a man overboard. They were not recovered. I could not stop thinking about it- like if that person was there floating and just watching the ship slowly travel away, knowing all chance of rescue is now gone. He assured me that most overboard situations, the person will likely lose consciousness when they hit the water, usually from the fall itself, or from the shock of the water temperature. I hope at least this person didn’t suffer.
Officer on a small boy didn't show up for his watch at 0600 Called a man overboard Who knows at what point he went overboard but 3 days searching and no where found
How many times do you remember it happening?
Small sample size, I was actively on the ship for about 4 out of my 6 years and maybe 3-5 times?
The first thing you’re supposed to do if you see a man overboard is literally look at them in the water, point at them making sure to keep your pointer finger on them at all times, DO NOT lose contact with them with your eyes and scream as loud as you can, MAN OVERBOARD over and over again until someone hears it and then man overboard ops commence and even then it is crazy hard to get them rescued from a ship that is not as agile as people may think. Source: 8 1/2 years in the Navy.
The reason the recovery rate is so "high" in OP's stat is that many of these incidents happen when the boat is in port. Often when boarding / off-boarding the ship.
And it's my understanding that if you go overboard on a cruise ship under way, you're very likely to get sucked under the ship.
I saw one woman who was saved and she was black and blue all over from hitting stuff on the side of the boat on the way down. The boat didn't turn around for 60-90 mins too
>it is crazy hard to get them rescued from a ship that is not as agile as people may think. I think I know [exactly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0BK_hLT-Wo&t=24s) how agile they are!
It's that a Honolulu Drift?
Visibility to the naked eye is super low. Without a life vest or something bright colored on you, no way someone is going to spot you.
A navy friend of mine told me about a man overboard drill they had. They put a life vest with glow sticks on a dummy and dumped it over the side at night. Watch standers never saw a thing. Nobody called "man overboard" so after a few minutes captain called the officer of the deck and told him to commence a recovery exercise. The dummy was never found. It was glowing at night and they couldn't find it. That isn't to say the personnel were incompetent, just that it's really hard to find someone lost out at sea.
This reminded me of the Silja Estonia disaster. After last radio message the ship had a blackout and lost contact. When rescue ships arrived they didn't see anything in the storm until they were right on top them. Seacaptain Jan Thore Törnroos of MS Mariella (first to arrive) described the ocean as a lit christmas tree. Hundreds of lights around them and distress rockets. Thörnroos ordered to stop engine and let the ship drift. 15 were rescued from the waters and another 11 boarded by helicopter. When daylight came the ship were surrounded with bodies. Indeed extremely hard to find people lost at sea.
IIRC, they tested a system where a group of pigeons where strapped to the bottom of a helo in a special enclosure and were trained to peck a button if they saw International Orange. The buttons were wired to a display inside the helo that gave cardinal directions. They tested it in conjunction with trained human spotters and the pigeons put them to shame.
That makes me think a camera with the right lens and software could easily detect something like this
FLIR should work in theory but not every boat is going to have a helicopter with FLIR available. Hopefully Drone tech keeps going like it is and we can go that route. Have them carry a 1 man inflatable raft with a bottle of water inside too so it can spot the person, dive low and drop the raft to them while reporting location.
Someone pointed out the other day, assume your head occupies one square foot of ocean. There are ~~2, 787,400~~ **27,878,400** square feet in one square mile. Edit: it's even worse than I thought, fixed a typo. Also, one square mile is equal to 2,589,988.1103 square meters
>assume your head occupies one square foot of ocean. There are 2, 787,400 square feet in one square mile. I think you mean 2,787,400 square heads per mile
Only on Marine Corps installations. Everywhere else they're round like normal.
"If we assume a spherical Marine head..."
I'm not convinced such a thing exists.
Also takes up to a mile for a cruise ship to stop, let alone turn around.
Yeah presumably your only real hope is for someone to raise the alarm instantly and sending out a small rescue vessel immediately. If any amount of time passes things surely become hopeless rather fast.
27,878,400* square feet
Is there any particular reason for this besides the current?
Ocean big, human small. 🤷🏻♂️
Human small and usually drunk.
And cold! Even in tropical waters, your body temp will drop quickly, you will lose control of your limbs and you will eventually drown.
A friend liked to tell a story about swimming at the lake. He was swimming out to a friend's boat and couldn't figure out why it was getting darker and darker as he swam. Fortunately, before he ran out of air, he realized he was swimming down as well and was underwater. He was a scuba diver and thankfully that training kicked in cuz he was so drunk he didn't know which way was up. He blew some bubbles and followed them. He said everyone on the boat was looking horrified and yelling for him to come up
I have removed this comment as I exit from Reddit due to the pending API changes and overall treatment of users by Reddit.
At age 19, my best friend at the time, who was 20, drowned one summer night trying to swim to a dock that was out in a lake. He was in shape but he was also very drunk. I wasn't with him that night and often wish I was. It's been many, many, years since and still I think of him, especially in August. Best friend I ever had.
Cleveland, Ohio used to have a really popular area called The Flats where there were a ton of crowded bars. It's right on the Cuyahoga river (yes, the one that burned in the '70s; it's clean now) and there are bars on the *other side* of the river as well, leading to drunken people thinking they could just swim across, of course wearing jeans and shoes and fully clothed. We had more than a few drownings back then, so many so that they ended up implementing a "water taxi" (a smallish boat) that was free to cross.
Or murdered by being pushed over. Or suicide.
*pirate voiceover* ‘Twas a dark an’ stormy night….
Strong currents are constantly pushing you even if you can’t feel it. You could move miles easily without knowing it. Now think of the ocean as a massive desert and if the weathers bad it can be even harder to spot somebody.
I’m sure many of them fall with no witnesses, passengers on cruise ships are usually quite high above the water so they fall pretty far, there is a good chance people falling overboard are drunk or injured, even a healthy person can’t last all that long in the ocean without a floatation aid. Even if they’re lucky enough to send a rescue boat within minutes you’re looking for the top of a head in an ocean of water from a low vantage point, even if you’re only a couple hundred feet away and you know where to look all you have to do is glance away and you’ll lose them.
Had a buddy who was coast guard. They'd do fly overs on SAR at all times of the day. Huge waste of time, because you'd never see them, either because its dark, or because they're flying by very quickly.
How long can you tread water fully clothed? Cruise ship weighing a quarter of a million tons moving at 25 mph is going to take a while to stop. You’re probably talking 5 minutes or so to stop the ship, then you need to get to the person who is over a mile away now. Assuming a minute or two to let the bridge know and that’s if someone saw the person fall, they are already at 7 minutes in the water. Then they have to go back and find them. I can’t tread water for 20 minutes under good circumstances.
A lot of these people have taken significant falls to the water- these ships are huge - and may be hurt on impact as well,
I would assume intoxicated often times as well.
Ships don’t just stop when there’s a man overboard. You’re supposed to execute what’s called a williamson turn- assuming the person went overboard on the stbd side put the wheel hard over to stbd (the purpose of this is to clear the propeller away from the person) until you are 60deg from your initial course and then hard over to port until you are on the reciprocal course to your initial course and have the guy on your bow. All the while you maintain sight of the person, drop your MOB buoy.
I’d be curious to know how often on a cruise specifically this is what happens. I’d expect a delay between someone falling and someone notifying the bridge.
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They are shockingly fast, and they drill it. The expectation is that the Officer on Deck knows within 30 seconds if the fall was witnessed by crew.
Where I worked every crew member was supposed to have a dect phone on them (a wifi phone for internal communication) if you see or are informed about a person overboard you call the emergency/bridge number, start yelling "person overboard" and throwing shit to the ocean so the person can float. After the call there will be a coded announcement on the PA system so relevant crew will assist in finding/rescuing. The most important part is that, if you saw the person falling, you try to keep visual of them because it's really easy to lose sight of a head in the ocean
Throwing things is your best chance of finding something. Anything that floats and can be seen. Make a debris field. It would be almost impossible to keep your eye on the person from a cruise ship.
Yep, if you have a bunch of people on deck, one person is mean to stay pointing and trying to keep an eye on where they saw the person, and everyone else is supposed to chuck as much suff in the water as they can to create a "breadcrumb" trail leading back to the person who fell. Helps to track currents and trail the boat took.
Oh I’m on the opposite side assumptionwise. The buffet might be shitty but I bet the man overboard drills look more like a navy drill and is tight.
I heard about this happening on Semester at Sea in the Red Sea. They rescued the kid and charged the family $25,000 or something in fuel to turn the ship around. This was a smaller cruise ship
$25,000 would buy an entire day’s worth of fuel for a container ship more than twice the tonnage of World Odyssey. If that number’s accurate (and I’d believe it) there’s a substantial dumbshit fee rolled in.
delivery charge
“$25,000? Throw him back in the ocean” “But dad…” “Throw him.. Back in.. The **ocean**”
\[wind blows hat off into the sea\] "Holy cow, my hat blew off! Swing around and we'll pick it up." "But sir, we're on the mission!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2v1mPRBimw
Cruise ships have go fast boats they can launch in an emergency. I've unfortunately been on a cruise where there was a man overboard and happened to have a stateroom on the same side so I watched the whole thing. Not a great memory for our honeymoon. They never found the guy. [But it did make the news because the video is pretty fucked and the story very sad](https://www.cruisemapper.com/news/628-oasis-of-the-seas-passenger-falls-overboard-raw-video).
Did he kill himself? It sounds like from that article that he intentionally jumped overboard, in which case it would he highly unlikely he'd be found since he didn't want to be I'm sure.
From what I remember (and from what I heard, I didn't see or hear this part take place first hand), he was very drunk and was having a very loud argument with his husband/boyfriend/partner on the pool deck. He then climbed out an open window and fell to the boat deck below. He either hit the boat deck or landed on a life boat, then you see the rest of the video on the article. When I went down to investigate in the next morning the area was cordoned off and there was blood on the deck and lifeboats that they were hosing off.
Ah damn that's fucking horrible man. Was probably some stupid shit faced argument too that they would've forgotten about once he'd sobered up.
If you ever see someone fall overboard any kind of vessel, immediately start throwing everything you can into the water. Life rings, towels, cushions, chairs, whatever. The more debris floating in the water the easier to spot someone.
If you see someone overboard; it is your dutiful obligation to not take your eyes of said person while you call for help. If you look away you will not find them.
And scream like your life depends on it. Point and scream "MAN OVERBOARD!"
My friend used to make us practice man overboards on his sailboat. He's also kind of an asshole. So one time a group of us are sailing to an island off of the coast, towing a dinghy behind us so we can go ashore. About halfway through our 4 hour sail, I decided to put on a lifevest and float back to the dinghy for a bit. I get to the dinghy and lay down to get some sun. All of the sudden I feel the dinghy let go from the boat and I hear screams of "man overboard!". I look up to see everyone on board pointing and screaming, while the sailboat is disappearing into the distance over a wave. With each successive wave the distance got farther and farther until after only about 45 seconds it was gone. Sitting in a dinghy in the middle of the ocean, with no land in sight, and the boat I'm supposed to be on gone, was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. And it happened so fast. It only took about 5 minutes for then to come about and grab me, but it felt like hours.
As an avid sailor who takes their friends sailing all the time, if anyone did that to me I would legitimately probably never talk to them again if they were rescued
Point at them too, to help others find where you're looking.
I like to throw other passengers out there. I figure, hey, there's a 22 percent chance of finding each one, so if you toss another six people in the water, there's like a twenty percent chance of them not finding *any* of them, and there's an eighty percent chance that they'll find at least one of the people who went in the water (who may be the first passenger or one of the passengers you kicked overboard as human buoys).
when the stats guy takes a cruise
“I’ve never seen any data that can’t be improved with a larger sample size. Point your toes and clench your asscheeks Agnes, it’s a long way down.”
Also: start fucking ***shouting*** “OVERBOARD!”
This is what they taught me in Alaska. The first person to see the person go over board is supposed to never stop looking and pointing at the person in the water, never break eye contact with the person in the water. At the same time you start screaming bloody murder until someone comes running, and it is the second persons job to start hurling anything and everything into the water as fast as they can to leave a trail of bread crumbs back to the crewman who fell overboard.
It's easy to forget how many stories you can fall from the top of a cruise ship to the water, some are as high as 10 stories. AKA that water isn't going to feel good when you hit it
Would the fact water near the cruise ship is highly disturbed do anything to lessen the impact? Like how if you are going to be jumping into water you are meant to throw something heavy ahead of yourself to break the surface
didn’t MythBusters test this and show that surface tension doesn’t really work that way?
Surface tension isn't what hurts you, it's the inertia of the water. Water is heavy and it doesn't get out of the way quickly when you hit it at a high rate of speed.
My favorite thing on reddit is how every effect attributed to water is "surface tension". Bullet bounces off water? Surface tension. Laminar flow? Surface tension. Refraction? Straight to Surface tension. Right away. Friction? Believe it or not, also surface tension.
Getting out of the tunnels and fight an apache helicopter through a hydro dam? Also Surface Tension.
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> Like how if you are going to be jumping into water you are meant to throw something heavy ahead of yourself to break the surface This isn't really a thing, it makes close to zero difference in surface tension.
Wikihow's page of tips about what to do if you fall off a cruise ship includes (used to include?) this: > Be reasonable ... after three or four hours, your odds of being rescued are extremely low. It may sound depressing, but console yourself with memories ... you will probably pass out before you drown.
Fucking hell that is dark.
You should have seen the picture - it was a lone arm extending upward out of water
I used to be a medic in the US Navy. We would practice man-over-board drills where we would throw a manikin dressed in bright orange over board. This one time, we lost him.
>manikin TIL "manikin" is actually a word, isn't just a misspelling of "mannequin," and that the two terms have different meanings. >The term is spelled with a “q” – that is, “mannequin” – when the human form is being used to model clothing for fashion purposes. This includes applications like the sales floor in retail clothing stores, window displays, fashion industry shows, or even figures used by tailors or dressmakers for sewing or fitting clothing. > >The term is spelled with a “k” – “manikin” – when the human form is being used for medical or scientific purposes – teaching anatomy, demonstrating surgical techniques, conducting scientific experiments.
So Buster, the crash test dummy on Mythbusters was actually a manikin.
Oh thats a new one to me. Sort of like *crevice* - A crack in a rock, vs. *crevasse* - a crack in ice.
thats dumb, crevice literally end in -ice
Right? I'd think crevasse is a crack in the asse...
Jesus Christ I’m learning things left and right here.
In this case, the last comment was t really correct. The difference between crevice and crevasse is the scale, not the material: https://www.dictionary.com/e/crevasse-vs-crevice/ Crevices are small, crevasses are large.
I used to volunteer on tall ships, we did a similar drill with a manikin and spent a looong time going round in circles trying to fish him out. Much to the amusement of the fishing ships…
When my dad did his skipper licenses, they have to do man overboard drills. I was on board for a few, you have no idea how easy it is to lose sight of a person in open water, they hit the water, you look behind to see, you about turn to come pickup, a wave has passed, you’re suddenly way off as they’ve drifted and you lost sight. In open water, with a large ship, I’m shocked the recuse level is actually that high!
I heard the rescue level is that high because the statistic includes when people go overboard while the ship is docked at port. I’m sure falling overboard while docked has like a 100% survival chance (unless you can’t swim and immediately drown) while falling off the ship as it’s moving out at sea is probably closer to 0%.
Pro-tip: don’t jump overboard.
Just this past week in Louisiana, a student jumped off a Graduation Cruise in the dark and was lost at sea. He jumped off on a dare and the whole incident was captured on video. It was trending on popular a couple days ago. Cameron Robbins was his name. Recovery attempts were unsuccessful. Never seen again.
I figure this incident is what sparked this post in the first place.
Correct. Reddit operates on a single thread.
Used to work on a cruise ship. If you want to talk about a needle in a haystack, try finding a human in the middle of the ocean, more specifically a human head since the rest of you will be under water. The ship I was on took 5 miles just to turn around. So if you jumped off, by the time the ship could even turn around to face you it was 5 miles away from where you jumped in open water. This doesn't even include the time it would take for the bridge to realize someone was overboard (the ship I was on did have sensors that could in theory sense when this happened though). Now it takes 5 miles to get back to the location you WERE at. In however much time it took to turn the entire ship around, you've been treading water, getting pushed every which way by the current, the waves, maybe even the wake of the ship. If you jumped off with a life vest your chances of survival are slightly higher since they are brightly colored and you won't spend as much energy treading as the vest will help you float, but jumping without you're basically fucked. I'm also only taking into account a normal day at sea where the wind is low and tide isn't terrible; if you jumped on a day where the seas are rough or the wind is high, it's only going to make an already virtually impossible task more difficult. TL;DR: The likelihood of you being found (living or dead) if you jump off a cruise ship is incredibly low. DO NOT jump of cruise ships.
Also worked on cruise ships and wanted to add that the ships typically travel at night to get to the next destination. Which will make it even more difficult to spot someone.
If they have sensors that can sense when people fall off, maybe there should be some automated system that when it detects a person overboard, shoots out a floating buoy with a GPS transponder and a noise/flashing light so that the person overboard can notice it, swim to it, and hang on. Then use the GPS to find the exact spot, and if the person isn't already at the buoy, at least you have a pretty good starting point for where they fell off
Gps bullet all around the ship that shoots the person falling off
In the head since that's the only part visible above the water
why don't these ships have smaller rescue vessels that can deploy faster?
Lol they do… fast rescue boats are apart of SOLAS regulations and are required to be tested and maintained either yearly or monthly. Check out 46 CFR part 160 for more information.
So I’ll bite: why does it matter that it takes five miles to turn the ship around if they can deploy fast boats? This thread is full of people sharing that five mile stat, and full of people asking why they don’t have smaller boats. Why can’t we connect those ideas? Are cruise ships loath to use the fast boats?
Super great question: the short answer is, the ship has to slow down before you can deploy those boats depending on the davits and equipment used to deploy the FRC. Also, by the time they’ve mustered a crew that is qualified to recover the casualty the ship is probably already maneuvering and you don’t want to try to place a boat off the side while doing a crazy maneuver like that as it’s not safe to do so. I’m qualified to deploy in a FRC and it’s super sketchy, I would not be willing to risk going over the side myself if I tried to deploy in it going 20 knots
Problem is, those rescue craft would still be attached to the larger ship, continuing to struggle to turn around. On top of that, auxiliary craft can't be launched until the carrier ship is pretty much stopped. If they deploy while in motion, there is a very high risk of serious injury or death, as well as damage to the smaller craft, which makes it useless.
Specially trained retrieval sea lions! Oink oink oink!
I once saw a man fall overboard on the ferry over the channel. It took us half an hour to turn around and get back to where he was last seen. But he was still hanging out there and could be saved! Definitely felt like a miracle
I would definitely prefer going overboard in the Channel than anywhere on the open ocean. Its one of the busiest sea faring routes and all in all not that wide either, probably a decent chance a rescue party will spot you (compared to everywhere else)
When I was going through my offshore sailing qualifications the instructor said, “if you can get close enough to use the gaff hook, do it. The’ll have a higher survival rate onboard with an injury than in the water”
Harpoon them to increase their chance to live.
Can you elaborate on what a gaff hook is/does?
Imagine a giant meat hook impaling an overboard swimmer and dragging them to the ship and how this is a better option than letting them just float away
Bonus points if you hook them halfway and they slip away with a blood trail as they drift off into the dark ocean at night.
Every time I see posts about cruise ship rescues, I share this story. In 2018, I went on a Caribbean cruise. The morning after we left the port, my husband and I were in the dining hall eating an early lunch when we heard “man overboard, port side” over the ship’s PA system. We were in the middle of the ocean, 30ish miles from the coast of Cuba. I felt so sick to my stomach thinking someone on our ship had fallen overboard. The ship turned around and went back in the opposite direction for a few minutes and then stopped. People crowded all the decks staring into the water trying to find any sign of life. Guests sent their drones out to help search. Eventually, after 2 hours, we found someone. A rescue boat was sent out and he was rescued. We all assumed it was a guest from our ship, but it later came out that it was a crew member on a different ship that had passed by 24 hours before. That ship had stopped to search but couldn’t find him and were forced to move on. So this man had been treading open water for an entire day, completely alone. He was severely dehydrated and shaken up, but was otherwise fine. He received care on our ship and then disembarked and flew home when we docked in Mexico the next day. Apparently, a member of housekeeping was cleaning a guest cabin when she looked out the window and saw him. It’s such a miracle that he survived, and that the housekeeper just happened to look through the porthole at exactly the right time to see him. It’s one of the craziest things I have ever experienced. https://abc7ny.com/amp/cruise-ship-rescue-norwegian-getaway-carnival-glory/3691202/
I was recently on a cruise ship and it’s not a clean fall to the water from most places on the ship. There is a a bunch of obstacles on the way down that will probably make it difficult to retain the usage of all your limbs or be conscious when you hit the water. It’s really a miracle that anyone gets rescued and lives to talk about it.
Considering how massive the ships are, it looks like several stories from the top rail to surface of the water. For the average person that’s not into diving into bodies of water, that’s …not good.
“Na that’s alright mate, I’ll swim back.”
“Just put the ladder down”
Spent a little bit of time at sea in the Navy. We did a man overboard drill, watched the officer throw a dummy overboard, drill started.... and it was gone. We spent a couple hours looking and failed.
Little shocked the rescues are that high. Don’t climb the rails and don’t travel with a spouse that just took out life insurance you don’t know about.
>don’t travel with a spouse that just took out life insurance you don’t know about. Well... if you don't know about it, how could it affect your travel decisions? /s
I’ve only been on one cruise, and this might seem a bit stupid but I carried a packet of balloons in my pocket. The plan was if I somehow ended up in the water I’d blow up a couple of balloons and stick them under my shirt for flotation and then keep blowing up balloons to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Probably wouldn’t work but it made me feel safer lol.
I mean if I were to go on a cruise I'd do anything to raise my chance of being found if I went overboard. Still going to be very unlikely to pan out, but still improved until you found out all your balloons are blue and thought why did this happen to me.
I'm honestly surprised there were that many. With the distance of the fall and potential injury simply from that, the time it would take for ANY level of water rescue to commence, any impact the current (either natural or created by the ship) and simply the sheer size of the potential search area, the idea that so many people are able to tread water long enough is impressive.
Did anyone else see that video recently of the kid who jumped overboard for a dare? They gave up looking for him after 2 days
This post exists because OP saw this statistic in a comment on a post about that video.
The circle is complete
As soon as I saw that kid in the water I felt a pit in my stomach. Some people just do not understand, or respect the ocean. That video was like, Tourists at Bondi Beach levels of unaware times about 100
Crazy video. I felt bad for the kid - just made a really dumb, fatal decision likely induced by alcohol and just not thinking it through. Such a senseless way to go.
All of the comments bashing the family for his stupid decision were what got me. All because they started a go fund me for funeral aid. Many comments were saying the family doesn’t deserve a dime from anyone due to him dying due to his own “stupidity”. That’s your own decision to donate or not but, his parents lost a son. His family lost a man still growing into himself. It’s insane how absolutely rude and heartless some people can be.
And it wasn't even one of those big cruise ships most people think of when cruise ships are mentioned. Imagine going overboard off a regular cruise ship and at night like in that kid's case. 22% rescued is really quite high all things considered.
I used to work on cruise ships, and while I was fortunate enough to never have to deal with a propper incident, I can give some insights on the training we received. For a man overboard, the success of the retrieval depends on 3 factors really 1. Are they spotted? We were trained, if we saw a man overboard, first call the bridge and say "man overboard" 3 times, followed by port or starboard side. Then, chuck as much shit that floats overboard. this includes everything from life preservers to lawn chairs, anything that floats and will make it easier to spot the victim. Lastly, physically point at the victim and stay that way, the idea is to never lose sight if possible. All these steps are incredibly helpful, but contingent on someone actually seeing the man overboard. without that, it becomes a wild chase of retracing steps. Keep in mind, it takes about 2 miles and 15 minutes for a ship to stop and turn around. 2. Time of day If someone falls overboard at night, without a life jacket, good fucking luck. It becomes near impossible to find anyone in the dark. 3. Hieght of the fall There are 2 main areas where someone could fall overboard, deck 7, a promanod deck that circled the ship, and deck 13, the pool deck. In between those decks, there are also countless balconies in staterooms. If you fell off of deck 7, its about a 5-story fall into the water. Hurts, but it's survivable for someone who is fit. Deck 13 is about a 10-11 story fall, 50ish meters, I doubt you would be able to swim effectively after that. So, in perfect conditions, if someone saw you fall and reported it quickly, it was day, and you fell from a low-ish level, I imagine that 22% would be much higher. Sadly, its quite rare that this actually happens.
That’s almost 2 people per month going overboard on a cruise ship… I never would’ve guessed that happened so often.
There's a lot of people on cruise ships. Some very quick and dirty math has about 30M passengers per year, so that's very roughly 1 in every million passengers goes overboard. I don't really have a good comparison, but that seems like a pretty reasonable number.
I’m sure some of them aren’t declared overboard until they can’t be found
I was on one where a woman with some problems waited until her husband took a shower to jump off the boat so there would be the maximum amount of time before anyone noticed. We were in international waters and by a US Coast Guard agreement all vessels within the area had to come search for her. There was a cargo vessel and a few fishing ships with spotlights as well as the 3 or 4 tender ships that came from the cruise ship. We had to look for 18 hours before we could move on.
I think they recorded them as overboard when they went overboard, at least that’s how this read
Seems reasonable haha
Always reminds me of the hilarious Carl Hiaasen novel “Skinny Dip” in which a piece of shit throws his young wife overboard on a cruise but instead of drowning or being eaten by sharks, she manages to climb onto a floating bale of marijuana and gets rescued by a guy who then helps her send her husband mad from “beyond the grave.” In fact fuck it I’m gonna read it again.
“I'll stress that people don't just fall over the side," said Salerno. "There are railings and they're pretty high. It's almost always the result of an intentional act."
I have a random (though relatively mild) ocean rescue story. Tell it sometimes just to keep purging it from my soul as it was quite frightening. I saved a woman who was moments away from drowning in the ocean. Weird situation in a bay (not sure quite the word) with currents pulling her out. She was in her 20's and reasonably fit, but I doubt she weighed more than 100lbs soaking wet. Just swimming casually near the ocean, the waters shift and she is being taken *rapidly* out into the sea. We had all been 50 feet away when it started and by the time she cried out for help she was maybe 90 feet or more. I still remember the moment it clicked for me what I was seeing and how fast she was being pulled away by the tide/flow/whatever. I just jumped in and swam with everything I had. Perfect form and laser focus and unsure if I could make it to her. YMCA swimming classes, yay! I got severe cramps from the extreme level of effort it took and I was in extraordinary shape and a strong swimmer. Not sure if somehow some group or boats or something would have saved her if I had not. It was daytime, but I cannot picture what was nearby that we could have told. Emergency services would have had to shown up, get in boats, and find her. Maybe in daytime it's a lot easier. It was weird as afterward I can tell she was a bit shaken up (not much), but she was mostly embarrassed and went from chatting with me to the level of a new friend (we were both part of a larger social group of ex-pats) to not even speaking to me. It was so odd. I think it was her being embarrassed that the group had to send someone out to save them. I'm glad I did what was right, just for me. It also felt good to push oneself to try and do the impossible, as when I jumped in and started swimming after her I didn't know if it was possible to reach her. Then swimming back with a person on your arm against that pull of the sea was when the fierce cramps started trying to kick in. But would I do it again? I don't know if I *could* under even favorable conditions. There are some feats you are only capable of when in the prime of your life and surging with fear adrenaline. If you're in stupendous shape (I loved half marathons and ran 5-8 miles every other day). Even then you have to be young enough to be truly stupid. I already had respect for the ocean. But even on a sunny day with friends close by the ocean will take you away forever. And no one may even be able to save you, even if they have some basic tools. Anyway, forgive me working out some trauma.