We all learn from our experiences. How to do things better, faster, safer next time. But here’s one experience we’d rather not have – a fire on a boat in a slip nearby in the middle of the night.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened two weeks ago to Chris Sullivan, who lives aboard his powerboat in a marina in Falmouth, Mass. He works there too, so he’s very familiar with the marina, the boats and the security arrangements.
The story starts with someone pounding on the side of Sullivan’s hull at 1:30 in the morning to wake him up. A neighboring boat was going up in flames; a crew member was trying to extinguish them with a garden hose.
Here’s what Sullivan learned from everything that happened after that. What he did right, and what he would change.
What he did right:
Check to make sure everyone was off the boat on fire.
Call 911. Here it helps to know the marina’s street address.
Have your own boat ready to leave the dock in less than five minutes.
Get people and pets off your boat.
Grab important personal items off your boat – driver’s license, passport, hard drives.
Try to take your boat to another slip upwind of the fire.
What he’d change:
Sullivan realized it took him much too long to untie the dock lines on his boat. During a fire, every second counts. He realized he had all the extra dock lines on his boat, with the eye of the line on the cleat on the dock. For the sake of speed, he would reverse the process.
He needed bigger and better hooks on the pilings holding his bow lines to make casting off the lines easier without dropping them in the water.
He also needed a large knife, to cut his lines if necessary.
He did call 911 immediately, but he realized later that the local authorities did not alert the Coast Guard until much later. A VHF call to the Coast Guard could have provided more help earlier.
For more: https://www.spinsheet.com/chesapeake-bay/lessons-learned-during-slip-mates-boat-fire
