+1 on this. Also, ask Randy why he wears inflatable suspenders instead of a vest.

I was NEARLY separated going around Hatteras b/c I was shoved under water by the skipper of the boat I was on. It was a typical slow round up and capsize spinnaker flip. I had my escape route and was executing it, but suddenly he jumped on my back as I was lowering to the water. His weight forced me deep enough that I ended up going under the hull. I popped up ~2-3' from the bottom of the boat and started swimming like crazy. You add VHF, EPIRB, camel back, GPSs and the rest of the typical distance racing gear we wear along with a dry suit, a danforth as nothing on us at that point.... (get it anchor?) With the sand bars at the Cape, I'd go from swimming to running back to swimming very quickly. The breeze and current were offshore and luckily I was able to grab the TOP batten on the main as the mast pivoted by. I vowed that the only way I was letting go was if that batten broke off in my hand. Had I not held on, I was head to England w/o my passport, lol.

The point I wanted to make is that when sailing with skippers that I trust and especially the one I spend most of my on the water time with, we always have a plan/system. I'm usually the larger of the two and therefore am also the last person on the boat. As such, the skipper plans to roll himself up onto the boat as it rights while I always plan to have a solid hold somewhere and jump on as soon as he’s out of the way. This gives us a man on deck to steer if I can't hold on. Knock on wood, to date that has never happened and I've been upside down in some gnarly stuff on very light boats.

Which brings me to my last point which we were discussing a couple of weeks ago. Trust your partner and make sure that they're competent. I learned my lesson with the Worrell and never would I sail with that particular person EVER again OR do a race like that w/o someone that I would trust with my life! I know that my skipper can get us out of almost any jam and he knows that I can do that same. Among other things, we can both run the boat single handed and are both big enough to pull the other on board. We planned to do the Cuba race and that level of trust is a HUGE comfort to me.

In short, communication is key and IMO being prepared for all hell to break loose is part of that discussion. You can't prevent bad luck, but you can make good luck happen sometimes. I think the orange buoy and small drogue are both good ideas if they're small enough to not cause a problem on their own. Also, at one point Garmin Rhino’s were getting popular b/c they were radios with GPS that could send locations between the two, something else to consider.