What have we learnt?

“The Cycle”

An incident occurs, (normally it has to be a fatality, or no-one cares) on-line community sailing sites go “nuts”, reports are commissioned by various racing and non- racing agencies, findings are published, potentially some rule changes are made that no-one understands and only sees extra expense, social media picks another 24 hr topic and everyone moves one. ….. rinse and repeat, till the next incident occurs.

“What have we learnt” and how do we make the sport safer, is quickly forgotten until the next fatality. Our approach is reactive not proactive, with various agencies operating in “silos” to protect their own backside with no centralised collaborative approach.

Keel failure in Australia is well documented commencing in the modern era with the Excalibur incident in 2002. Reports have been carried out by the coroner, yacht clubs involved, Australian Sailing and contracted “experts” in the case of legal action. A summary of the recommendations from the various reports in Australia shows that very few have been implemented and if they have, there has been no education as to why the changes have been brought about.

The question that needs to be asked is “how do we change the behaviour of individuals involved, so this never happens again”. That is, everyone along the decision-making chain is actual changing the way they do things to make sailing safer …. Then we are getting somewhere.

An official from a local yacht club takes responsibility for mandatory keel inspections at their club, supported by the boat yard that does a deal for all members … backed up by the governing body who make it mandatory to report all groundings/keel issues during racing …. supported by government regulators who mandate that your boat must be deemed “safe” before you are allowed to sell it with a certificate to prove it.

Then we are starting to learn from what has happened and we are changing behaviour

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