Chapter 1 Situational Awareness

By Patrick Twohy​

Mastering finesse and cultivating situational awareness are key elements in becoming a proficient and composed sailor.

Chapter 1: Situational awareness

You know the saying about gravity, right? That it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law? The same idea applies to mariners and avoiding surprises. No one likes being surprised by a vessel they’re about to collide with. In fact, it’s such a good idea to avoid surprises at sea that there’s a law.

The Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972, popularly known as Colregs, sets out the rules we are required to follow on the water. The same rules govern the navigable waterways of generally every seafaring nation on earth and are intended to keep us all safe.

Some of the rules seem a little arcane. There’s a section on lights that minesweepers must show while working, which begs the question why we’d want to sail where there might be mines that need to be swept? So some rules probably don’t concern us much. But others, well…  

Some might say the most important bit in the 200-page Colregs book published by the United States Coast Guard are the 44 words that constitute Rule 5:

“Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper look-out by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate in the prevailing circumstances and conditions so as to make a full appraisal of the situation and of the risk of collision.”

This means, dear skipper, that you must use any means necessary, to borrow Malcolm X’s phrase, to be aware of any potential collisions. Your attention needs to be everywhere, all at once.

That means NO SURPRISES. If a skipper is surprised by anything going on around him, he’s violated Rule 5. That’s different from facing the unexpected — which happens all the time on the water. 

We’ll talk more about that when we discuss finesse in chapter 2 of this treatise.

By extension, I believe the spirit of Rule 5 goes a good deal further than its literal text. The skipper needs to be aware of anything that could affect his or her vessel — complete awareness of the situation.

There’s a ferry boat coming toward my starboard side. It’s not on a collision course. But the ferry will probably want to turn right and cross my path to dock at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. How will I handle that? Is there something I should do now? Is there something I should plan to do in a few minutes?

Blossom Rock buoy is up ahead. My current heading suggests we’ll pass it easily to windward. But I know there’s a pretty good flood tidal current pushing me downwind. I’ll need to keep an eye on the buoy over the next few minutes to make sure we can weather it. Should I adjust course? If so, when?

These are the kinds of situations that the writers of Rule 5 wanted vessel masters to be aware of. But a good skipper is a aware of a lot more than just things she might hit, or that might hit her.

Claude, the jib sheet trimmer, seems to being having trouble with the winch handle. Will that slow us down if we need to avoid another boat quickly during a race? Maybe get him to switch the handle for another one now. 

We’re heading out toward the Bay from the Spinnaker dock and we see some rowing skulls in the waterway ahead of us. We won’t reach them for a few minutes, but may mean we need to change course as we come closer. 

Holy cow! The stopper knot on the port jib sheet came out and now the sheet is flying free! We’ll need to fix that before we tack — which is going to need to be in the next 45 seconds if we don’t want to run aground. 

All three of these things could happen simultaneously. They all need to be handled. But not simultaneously. The skipper needs to keep all of them in mind, and deal with them at the right pace, in the right order, and in time to avoid problems. 

I think of something like this as a kind of mental juggling act. 

A juggler might work with three balls. At any one time, one ball is in the air, one is in his right hand, and one is in his left hand. He throws the ball in his right hand into the air. Now he can forget about that ball for a moment because he has other things to deal with. There’s a ball already in the air heading for his left hand. He has to toss the ball that’s in his left hand to his now-empty right hand. By the time he does that, it’s time to think about the original ball in the air — catch it with the now-empty left hand. And now it’s time to free the right hand again… etc. 

Lots of stuff going on. Some things need to be dealt with immediately. Other things can wait, but only for a moment. The juggler keeps the situation of each ball in mind, but he only pays direct attention to one thing at a time. That’s not to say he forgets about the other balls! Each ball moves from his direct attention to indirect attention and back. 

Now his assistant is going to add a fourth ball to the mix! That’s in mind, too. And when the new ball arrives, it’ll become part of the process. 

It’s a habit of mind that a sailor needs to develop.

This kind of situational awareness requires two seemingly opposite traits — the ability to provide full attention to a task while keeping a piece of one’s awareness available to note outside issues that may become important. That somewhat passive outside attention needs to have permission to break into one’s concentration on the current task at hand. 

And therein lies the most difficult part of real situational awareness: It’s the ability to concentrate while also being aware of and open to things outside the focus of concentration. 

It seems to me that the best way to acquire this situational awareness skill is to develop finesse as a sailor — to reach a point where one’s tasks are actually, truly simple. That leaves mind space available for outside inputs without making the skipper feel overloaded or unable to handle extra tasks or decisions new information may require.

That’s the subject of Chapter 2, which will appear in next month’s newsletter.