Before it happens: making drills part of your season

Nobody sets out to capsize a gig. The crews who handle it best are the ones who have already done it on purpose — on a mild, flat day, in sheltered water, with a support boat alongside. A short capsize drill once or twice a season turns a frightening event into a familiar routine, and familiarity is what keeps people calm.

Pick your conditions. Flat water, light wind, a sheltered harbour or estuary, and an experienced hand in a support boat with a throw line and a means of calling for help. Everyone wears a well-fitted buoyancy aid, and you brief the drill on shore first: who does what, how the boat will be recovered, and where the group gathers if anyone drifts.

• A head count from the coxswain before, during and immediately after the capsize
• Staying together as a crew rather than each person doing their own thing
• Getting a line on the boat and holding on to it
• Bailing a swamped gig with buckets once it is upright
• Being towed, with weight shifted to keep the bow up and the boat tracking straight

What actually happens when a gig goes over

Pilot gigs are big, heavy and buoyant, so the most likely outcome is not a neat capsize but a swamping. Take a wave over the gunwale in a chop, or ship water in a surf landing, and the boat fills and sits low, gunwales at water level, sluggish and hard to move. It looks alarming, but a swamped gig still floats and still supports the whole crew.

A full capsize — the boat on its side or turned over — is rarer, usually the result of a beam-on wave, a broach in surf, or crew weight shifting all at once. Even then, the hull is a large, buoyant object. That is the single most useful fact to hold on to when you are in the water: the boat is your best piece of safety equipment.

Staying with the boat

Your instinct may be to swim for the nearest shore. Fight it. A gig is far easier for a rescue boat or a passing vessel to spot than a single head in a chop, and it gives you something to hold on to while you sort yourselves out. Stay with the boat unless it is genuinely about to put you in danger, and even then stay together.

If you end up in the water:

• Keep your head up and control your breathing. Cold water shock makes you gasp; resist the urge to thrash.
• Get to the hull and hold on. If the boat is upright but swamped, grip the gunwale or a thwart, and keep your weight off the gunwale so you do not roll it further.
• Adopt the heat escape lessening posture — arms across your chest, knees drawn up — or huddle together as a group. Shared warmth counts.
• Count yourselves. The coxswain should be calling names, and every crew member should answer.

In UK coastal water, even in summer, useful movement may only last ten minutes or so before the cold bites. That is another reason to stay with the boat rather than attempt a long swim.

Signals, shouts and getting help

Make yourself visible and audible early. If you have a VHF radio or a phone in a dry bag, use it, and give the coastguard a clear picture: position, number of people, whether anyone is in the water, and the colour of the boat. A mayday for a crew in cold water is never an overreaction.

• The internationally recognised distress signal: slow, repeated raising and lowering of both arms.
• A whistle, if one is on your buoyancy aid. Three blasts, repeated, carries further than a voice.
• Flares, where carried, and only when you can see or hear someone who might respond.
• Anything that increases your silhouette — oars held aloft, a bright blade waved overhead, a cluster of people rather than scattered heads.

Keep the group together so you present one target, not six. If a support boat or another gig reaches you, follow their instructions without argument — they can see far more than you can from water level.

Righting, bailing and getting back in

An overturned gig is righted by the crew, or by a support boat taking a line. Get a line onto the boat first — bow, stern or around a thole pin — so it cannot drift away from you. Then work as a team: the aim is to rotate the hull back onto its keel by pulling down on one gunwale while others take the weight, not to lift the whole boat out of the water.

Once upright, the boat will be swamped. Do not all climb in at once. Two or three get in with buckets and bail hard while the rest hold on and keep the boat steady. As the water comes out, the gunwales rise, the boat firms up, and the remaining crew can board over the stern or quarter, one at a time, keeping weight low and central. If a tow is on offer, accept it, shift weight aft to lift the bow, and bail as you go.

Looking after each other afterwards

The drill is not finished when everyone is back on dry land. Cold, tired, shaken rowers go downhill quietly. Get wet clothing off, wrap people up, and give warm, sweet drinks — not alcohol. Watch for confusion, slurred speech or shivering that will not stop, and seek medical advice if you are unsure.

Finally, talk it through as a crew while it is fresh. What worked? What would you change? A calm, well-rehearsed response is not luck — it is something you practise, and every gig club is better for it.