You look up from folding a towel on the aft deck and the seven-year-old who was beside you thirty seconds ago is not there. You have perhaps sixty seconds that matter. What you do in the first ten of them decides the outcome - and if you have not decided in advance, you will lose those ten seconds to disbelief.
Child overboard: the immediate actions
The exact procedure belongs to the vessel safety management system, and you must learn it on your yacht in your first drill. The universal chain is:
- Shout. "Child overboard, starboard side!" Loudly, immediately, and keep shouting. Never go looking quietly first.
- Point and do not take your eyes off them. The pointer is a job. A head in water disappears in seconds and is almost impossible to re-find.
- Throw buoyancy - lifebuoy, danbuoy, anything that floats - towards them.
- Raise the alarm so the bridge knows instantly: engines and manoeuvring are the bridge decision, not yours.
- Do not jump in unless you are the trained person tasked to do so and the engines are confirmed stopped. A second casualty helps nobody.
- Account for every other child immediately. Where one goes, another follows.
Prevention is the real answer
The overboard drill is the failure case. The prevention is what you do all day: closed gates, held hands, life jackets on open decks under way, head counts, and a designated watcher who has accepted the watch out loud.
Life jackets for children
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| Sizing | By weight and chest size, never by age. Adult jackets can drown a child |
| Fit | Crotch strap fastened; lift test at the shoulders; it must not ride over the ears |
| Type | An approved jacket that turns an unconscious wearer face-up, with light and whistle |
| Stowage | Where you can reach them in seconds, and where the children have seen them |
| Practice | The children put them on themselves, in daylight, before it matters |
The muster list and abandon ship
Guests, including children, must be briefed and included in the emergency plan.
- Confirm that every child is on the muster list and that there is a named person responsible for each child at muster.
- There must be a plan for who physically carries the infant or toddler - to the muster station, into the liferaft. Ask the question out loud in the safety meeting. If nobody has an answer, that is the finding, and it goes to the captain.
- Know your own muster duty. If your duty conflicts with carrying a child, that conflict must be resolved on paper before an emergency, not during one.
- Walk the route with the children as a game: this is where we go, this is your jacket, this is who carries you.
Onboard Notes
Ask for a child-inclusive drill in your first week. A drill nobody has rehearsed with children in it is not a plan - it is an assumption, and assumptions are what kill children at sea.
Preparatory study only. These lessons are not a childcare qualification and are not first aid training. Caring for children at sea requires a recognised childcare qualification and a current, practically assessed paediatric first aid certificate from an approved provider.