Talk:Man overboard

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Man Overboard is a term generally related to situations where a person has fallen off a boat or ship, and the need exists to rescue that person. There are many causes: the person might have been struck by a spar of the ship (boom, spinnaker pole, davit), or might have lost his/her footing due to a slippery deck or the unexpected movement of the boat.

Different actions will be required to rescue a man overboard (a.k.a. crew overboard, person in water, victim, oscar, swimmer, etc.) based on the size of the mothership, whether the victim is wearing flotation, the temperature of the water, visibility, speed of the vessel, ability of the vessel to be maneuvered, etc.

Assuming for a moment that the man overboard falls from a small craft (under 20m, 66') the most critical issue is providing a means of flotation to the victim as soon as possible. The leading cause of death in small craft man overboard situations is drowning, not head injury, hypothermia, or other causes of death. Even good swimmers die from drowning, especially in cold water, much faster than most of us realize.

[edit] Renaming of this article

Are you serious? There is no such thing as "person overboard". It's always been "man overboard". That applies to men and women equally. Linuxbeak (drop me a line) 03:41, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know... Google search on "Person overboard" returns "about 17,200" pages. However, most of those results are from such disreputable sources as US Army Corps of Engineers, United States Coast Guard and some sailing schools [1] [2] [3] [4], etc. Nothing compared to 800K+ returned for "Man overboard", but of those results maybe only 30-40% have anything to do with boating. Ewlyahoocom 04:19, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

The correct term is still man overboard, and will probably remain so. I've rewritten a chunk of this article removing the lunatic bit saying "someone may dive into the water to help them" as that's a big no-no in almost all situations. Bert Preast 10:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)