horrible thread

[S/V Elusive]

Dana - good as long as you stay out of those BIG SEAS! Low freeboard might help too.

[ssullivan]

Originally Posted by dana-tenacity

I'm afraid of heights, so instead of climbing mountains I go sailing.

So what do you do when you need to change your anchor light??? I'm facing that one right now! The wife wants to go up instead.

[dana-tenacity]

Masts aren't tooooo bad, with a decent harness or chair, my problem is when you see people standing on the edge of a vertical drop, with no frame of reference I find the whole horizon tilting and feel I'm sliding forward into oblivion. Some people have suggested different cures, but I consider it a perfectly healthy fear, I just stay off mountains (and ladders)

[David_Old_Jersey]

Originally Posted by ssullivan

Here's a good link to put it all in perspective:

LiveScience.com - The Odds of Dying

Do you drive? Because check out the little table at the bottom of that article. I pasted it in for reasy reference below. The cause of dying is listed below with the odds. A good way to read 1-in-xxx data is to say, "one out of every xxx people I know will die of..."

I'd say a 1 in 20,000 (plus all the other factors involved people have mentioned) means sailing is farily safe. Of course, you could still have your accidental injury aboard (1 in 36 people will die of that).


Heart Disease
1-in-5
Cancer
1-in-7
Stroke
1-in-23
Accidental Injury
1-in-36
Motor Vehicle Accident*
1-in-100
Intentional Self-harm (suicide)
1-in-121
Falling Down
1-in-246
Assault by Firearm
1-in-325
Fire or Smoke
1-in-1,116
Natural Forces (heat, cold, storms, quakes, etc.)
1-in-3,357
Electrocution*
1-in-5,000
Drowning
1-in-8,942
Air Travel Accident*
1-in-20,000
Flood* (included also in Natural Forces above)
1-in-30,000
Legal Execution
1-in-58,618
Tornado* (included also in Natural Forces above)
1-in-60,000
Lightning Strike (included also in Natural Forces above)
1-in-83,930
Snake, Bee or other Venomous Bite or Sting*
1-in-100,000
Earthquake (included also in Natural Forces above)
1-in-131,890
Dog Attack
1-in-147,717
Asteroid Impact*
1-in-200,000**
Tsunami* 1-in-500,000 Fireworks Discharge
1-in-615,488

I seem to recall reading somewhere that according to the Ambulance Services one of the most common ways of single fellas over 60 kicking the bucket through natural causes...........is when "sitting on the can" (an Americanism I beleive ) or having a "Tommy Tank" (Cockney Ryhming slang )..........so the lesson is - stay married, cos' at least she will tidy up before the Ambulance arrives

[hellosailor]

Unbusted-
Sorry, I'm used to real emoticons, these smily graphics don't always mean anything to me, there's so many of them.<G>

[hellosailor]

Sean-
"So what do you do when you need to change your anchor light???"
Why that's easy, just open the throughhulls and lower the boat. Change the lights when the masthead has come down to a more convenient level.<G>

Can't pull alongside anything conveniently masthead-height?

[ssullivan]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

Sean-
"So what do you do when you need to change your anchor light???"
Why that's easy, just open the throughhulls and lower the boat. Change the lights when the masthead has come down to a more convenient level.<G>

Can't pull alongside anything conveniently masthead-height?

Perfect! I'll get started on that one now. I could easily stand on the dock (not terribly high up) and "lower" the boat down for a fix.

Pulling alongside something would be great, actually. But... it's still about 7ft (horizontally) from the outermost edge of the deck to the masthead light if I were pulled alongside. Still wouldn't be able to reach it.

[Benny]

Wait a minute - I have a better chance of dying from an asteroid than a tsunami - must be wrong as thousands have died from tsunamis throughout history and none from asteroids that I know of - in any event - your fears will decrease as your experience level and therefor confidence level increases and your fears seem to be about things you can't control - sudden bad weather or breakdowns leading to disaster. Be well prepared, be sure of your vessel and it's equipment, take nothing for granted and start small and simple on protected waters and build your level of expertise from there. Soon you'll be out sailing in heavy weather.

BTW - I like that idea about lowering the boat in the water to work on mast fittings - as I get older, going aloft gets really scary

[ssullivan]

I think those last couple items in the "odds of dying table" are a bit theoretical in nature. They assume a lot. I'd tend to agree with you, Randy. You can't measure the statistic of an asteroid impact until one's happened. I think they are really reaching on that one saying that an asteroid impact is X percent likely, then going on to say that if one hit, Y percent of everyone would die... etc... Weak pseudo-math at best.

However, the items near the top are more accurate.

[Alan Wheeler]

I just came out from under that table, looked out to see if the sky was clear of large falling objects and ran to the keyboard.
Yeah it's a bit of a "wide angle" view that one. They do it by looking at the statistics of impacts in the past earth history. Then they say every X many years an asteriod will impact, so that gives them a figure to start with. The thing is, there have been lots of impacts in history, enough to give a fairly good indication of what is posible int he future. Remember, one did nearly impact in very recent times over Siberia, flattening the forest for 100 miles around.
The highest rate of Hartattack happens Monday mornings, the first day of the working week.

An instructor was taking a class for there first skydive. As they were about to jump, one hesitated saying, I am not so sure now, what if my shute doesn't open? The instructor replied, nothing to worry about, statistics show that you have a one in 9999 chance of the shute not opening. The student said OK and leaped out the door. To the next jumpers horror, the first jumpers shute didn't open. The second jumper looked shocked and terror was all over his face. The instructor yelled, Don't worry mate, your safe for another 9998 jumps.

[GordMay]

None of the asteroids or comets discovered so far is on a collision course with Earth. However, we can't speak for those that are not yet discovered. In principle, one of those could hit any time, but statistically the chances are very small.

Excerpted from NASSA’s FAQs About NEO* Impacts
*Near-Earth-Objects (NEOs) are small objects in the solar system (asteroids and short-period comets) with orbits that regularly bring them close to the Earth and which, therefore, are capable someday of striking our planet.

”... We don't know when the next NEO impact will take place, but we can calculate the odds. Statistically, the greatest danger is from an NEO with about 1 million megatons energy (roughly 2 km in diameter). On average, one of these collides with the Earth once or twice per million years*, producing a global catastrophe that would kill a substantial (but unknown) fraction of the Earth's human population. Reduced to personal terms, this means that you have about one chance in 40,000 of dying as a result of a collision. Such statistics are interesting, but they don't tell you, of course, when the next catastrophic impact will take place - next year or a million years from now. The purpose of the Spaceguard Survey is not to improve these statistical estimates, but to find any individual rock that may be on a collision course.

With so many of even the larger NEOs remaining undiscovered, the most likely warning today would be zero -- the first indication of a collision would be the flash of light and the shaking of the ground as it hit. In contrast, if the current surveys actually discover a NEO on a collision course, we would expect many decades of warning. Any NEO that is going to hit the Earth will swing near our planet many times before it hits, and it should be discovered by comprehensive sky searches like Spaceguard. In almost all cases, we will either have a long lead time or none at all ...”

Goto: FAQs About NEO Impacts

* The generally accepted age for the Earth, and the rest of the solar system, is about 4.55 billion years (plus or minus about 1%).
The oldest rocks on Earth found so far are the Acasta Gneisses, in northwestern Canada near Great Slave Lake (4.03 Ga), and the Isua Supracrustal rocks in West Greenland (3.7 to 3.8 Ga), but well-studied rocks nearly as old are also found in the Minnesota River Valley and northern Michigan (3.5-3.7 Ga), in Swaziland (3.4-3.5 Ga), and in Western Australia (3.4-3.6 Ga). [Ga = 1 billion years, and Ma = 1 Million years).

Assuming the American Billion, that amounts to about 4,000 to over 8,000 likely NEO impacts, to date.

65 million years ago, a 10-kilometer asteroid struck the north of the Yucatan Peninsula, causing a global firestorm, then a cold snap and finally a global warming that extinguished the dinosaurs. Mammals moved to center stage.
3.3 million years ago, an impact in Argentina preceded numerous extinctions and a global cooling trend.
In 1490, about 10,000 people died in the Chinese city of Chi1ing-yang, when an asteroid broke up overhead.
In 1908, an asteroid estimated at 50 meters across exploded above Tunguska, Siberia, blowing down trees across 2,000 square kilometers, and killing a thousand reindeer, but apparently no people. Because the stony object exploded in the atmosphere, there's no crater.

[Benny]

LOL - now I know why I won't skydive - besides I scuba dive and if I did both - what insurance company would issue a policy - then my wife would have to give up her plans to do me in 'cause I'd be worth more alive than dead.

[hellosailor]

"Wait a minute - I have a better chance of dying from an asteroid than a tsunami - must be wrong"

Well, asteroids have caused mass extinctions on a global scale. But in my corner of the world, no one has *ever* been harmed by a tsunami, at least no tsunami has ever been documented--not even in the geological records.

So I'd have to go along with that, asteroids are a higher risk to me than tsunamis. Gotta be careful with those statistics. Like swordswallowing, they can be deceptively simple.<G>

[Benny]

True - historical geological records and the ever present expected future event indicate that an asteroid would statistically measure a higher probability of killing me than a tsunami simply because of expected number of deaths involved.
however, right here and right now and recent history indicates that the probability of a tsunami would be more likely to kill me than an asteroid. Like you, I couldn't experience a tsunami where I live but I'm certainly glad i wasn't on vacation near the ocean in those areas where the last one hit Let's hope none of us experience either one.

[ssullivan]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

"Wait a minute - I have a better chance of dying from an asteroid than a tsunami - must be wrong"

Well, asteroids have caused mass extinctions on a global scale. But in my corner of the world, no one has *ever* been harmed by a tsunami, at least no tsunami has ever been documented--not even in the geological records.

So I'd have to go along with that, asteroids are a higher risk to me than tsunamis. Gotta be careful with those statistics. Like swordswallowing, they can be deceptively simple.<G>

Hellosailor:

Based on knowing that we are in the same corner of the world, I might have to disagree with you. Not only have there been storm surges that have caused the East River and the Husdon River to meet - at Canal Street, but the island of Manhattan and Long Island are two of the most vulnerable places in the entire USA for tsunami damage and especially tsunami death due to impossible evacuation and high population. The North Shore of LI is better protected than the South Shore, which would be annihilated in even a modest tsunami. Possible sources of such tsunamis are believe to be our beloved Canaries, who have large seismic activity and active volcanoes. It hasn't happened in our recollection, but the odds are it will eventually. Heck, even a moderate hurricane would devistate lower Manhattan and the South Shore of Long Island.

Here's some interesting reading and animations done by SUNY regarding various hurricane strengths and the south shore:

Long Island Storm Surge Maps


Oh, and don't forget the best thing to do if you are out in your boat already and not able to escape a tsunami by land - get out to deep water!