When Boarding Ladders Are Out of Reach
What if you're alone and in the water -- and can't get to your boarding ladder?
July 10, 2015
Question: The photo below shows a boarding ladder on a new sailboat at a boat show. The problem I see with the arrangement is that the access to the boarding ladder is only available when the drop-down transom on the boat is in the down position. If you fall in the water, how are you supposed to get back on the boat if the transom is in the up position, as it would be when you’re underway? Can you shed some light on this? It seems like a major safety flaw to me.
The boarding ladder on this European-built boat is on a transom that lifts up and down. How do you get back aboard if you're alone and fall overboard when the transom is in the up position?
Answer: You’ve made a good observation and identified a fairly significant difference between the ABYC (American Boat and Yacht Council) and ISO or CE standards as they apply here. The ABYC mandates that the means of re-boarding be deployable from the water. (We covered this a while ago in Is My Boarding Ladder Safe?) In fact the most recent revision to the ABYC Standard H-41, which addresses this issue, was updated in 2014 to make the re-boarding means even more accommodating.
The boat you show is undoubtedly a European-built boat, and in fact it does comply with the ISO or CE standards. The devil is in the details, or in this case the wording of a given standard. ISO says it this way:
Any craft shall be provided with a means of re-boarding. Either:
- it shall be equipped with a specific means of re-boarding from the water, e.g. ladders, steps, handholds, brackets; or
- it need not be equipped with a specific device if its characteristics (e.g. low freeboard or part of the hull) facilitate re-boarding from the water without a specific device. This shall be demonstrated by a physical test performed by one person alone...
This goes on to define the person as weighing at least 75 kg, so that clearly implies an adult. More importantly, though, the standard goes on to say:
“On a craft where the specific means of re-boarding is not deployable by a person in the water, additional information shall be included in the owner’s manual, warning that the means of re-boarding shall be permanently deployed if the craft is used singlehanded, whether anchored, moored, stationary, or under way. This shall also be explained by a label close to the helm station.”
So, my interpretation of all of this is that in the ISO world, a builder has a choice of either a permanently installed means or a means that can be deployed when needed. The tricky part of all of this is that the ISO standard also describes the requirements as something that can be met under some rather interesting circumstances; specifically, while underway and operating singlehanded.
In that case the device must be deployed and usable under pretty much all conditions.
So, regarding the boat in your photo, I doubt that many folks will be sailing it with the transom in the down position. That tells me that an additional means of re-boarding should be provided and instructions for its use need to be included in the owner’s manual for the boat with particular detail for the singlehanded situation. I wonder if that builder does provide additional guidance and equipment to accommodate singlehanded operation—or if they just expect singlehanded sailors to have the transom in the down position at all times. These are questions worth asking the next time you see this arrangement.
