Kids in the Cockpit by Jill Schinas

Author:Jill Schinas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Alarming

One gadget worth considering if you will be sleeping aboard your yacht is an intruder alarm. An intruder alarm is no bad thing in its own right, but if there are small children in the crew it also serves the purpose of an ex-truder alarm. I have already mentioned the possibility of a child going over the side at night, while the boat is in harbour. If you can bear to sleep with all the hatches shut then you will not need to take special precautions, but most people find sleeping in an unventilated cabin fairly claustrophobic. Yachtsmen cruising in the tropics invariably leave all the hatches open, including the companion hatch.

The potential for disaster is there. A Belgian yachtsman whom we met in the Cape Verdes claimed to have gone on deck in the night, in answer to nature’s call, and to have found his baby daughter floating face down beside the boat, ‘with the air trapped in her plastic pants keeping her afloat’. She was still alive; in fact, by the time the tale was told she was eight. I took this story with a pinch of salt – it does not seem to ring true – but the point is that it could happen. A secure cot or a half-door on the toddler’s cabin are the most obvious first line of defence and ought to be adequate, provided you are absolutely certain that your system is 100 per cent foolproof. A cheap, battery-operated motion detector buys extra peace of mind. We installed one across the companionway and in five or six years of regular use it gave us only two heart-stopping false alarms. Highly recommended for every over-anxious mum.

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