Boarding an RIB

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Chuck Tribolet:
BTW, I don't clip off the BC before taking it off -- one more entanglement hazard. I take it off, then clip it off to a tag line. My boat has a ladder so I don't need to take my weight belt off before I get in.
This is good advice Chuck. I usually clip off first, but I've done it a zillion times, but for someone doing this for the first time, your advice is good.


I have some pictures of a terrific ladder on a RIB that I can send you if you PM me...
 
I was just teasing Catherine about her statement that she has a serious problem with people who can't lift themselves up into an RIB, since I've never been able to do it myself without assistance. I do TRY, however :)
 
My technique for my 12' Rendova RIB has been to take off BC at the surface and clip to a painter off the bow. Then I grasp the handles on the top of the tube, give a quick kick with fins and pop up the side. At that point my mask hits the side of the console and my left hand slips off, making me go "thunk" on the side and then slither backwards off the side back into the water. At that point my fins hit the underside of the hull, knocking one of them loose (but not quite off). After a quick expletive or two, I then take advantage of the fin being loose and take them both off and toss them over the side into the tender, and circle to the stern and place my feet on the cavitation plate on the motor. Grasping the cowl handle on the outboard, I then pull myself up over the back of the motor. One of my feet slips in the process, meaning I sort of tumble over the top of the outboard, but at least I land (mostly) into the middle of the boat, smacking my head mask-first on the console again. After getting up and looking to see if anyone was watching, I then notice that I apparently was a little too strong in tossing the fins into the boat and one of them had apparently gone over the other side. At this point I slide back off the side of the boat and swim past the bow where my BC was floating, usually to find out that I thought I had clipped it to a loop on the end of the line but had actually clipped it to just a straight part of the line, and the BC is now about 20-30 yards down current. After a quick swim to recover it (using only one fin), I'm able to de-don the BC and then practice my recovery techniques to find the other fin. Returning to the boat, I repeat the process, only am now able to keep the fins in the boat when tossing them in. This method seems to work pretty well over all, with the only downsides being I seem to have to replace masks fairly frequently and it seems to drive my computer nuts on the profile.

Of course, the above is just my technique and others on SB might have better suggestions.
 
No way - I paid good money to squelch all evidence!
 
Thought I might of missed something good.

If you can get back on board still in your equipment then your doing way better than me. Squirming around on top of the boat tubes in full equipment is kind of rough on them anyways. N
 
Chucks method with the ladder works. I have a 19' RIB and we have a ladder that we attach to the ropes on the side. Just one rung goes down into the water. I doff my BC, but wear the weight belt. ( I had an issue with dropping it when I took it off. ) Using the ladder I can get out wearing all of my gear but it's dicey. The one time I did it, I rolled over the tube and into the boat, landing on my back like a stranded turtle. My lovely husband just sat there and laughed until I was able to right myself. Even with the ladder there are people who have serious trouble getting back into the boat. It requires some upper body strength that some of the older / heftier folks just don't have.
 
Stoo:
This is good advice Chuck. I usually clip off first, but I've done it a zillion times, but for someone doing this for the first time, your advice is good.


I have some pictures of a terrific ladder on a RIB that I can send you if you PM me...
I've taken mine off a zillion times too (> 1000). I still don't clip it off. I wear a back
plate (no quick release shoulder straps) and I've found it's far easier to roll out out of
it at 10' after I clip off the camera, then ascend -- don't laugh it really works.

I don't have a RIB -- they'll sink if a shark bites them -- don't laugh I know of at least
two incidents, one of them a friend of mine and was on national TV. ;-) If a shark bites
my whaler, his gums will itch from the glas for months and the whaler will still float.
 
Getting into a RIB over the tubes isn't about going UP but rather IN. Don't hoist any
body mass any higher than you have to. And the same principle applies to hard boats.

Remember the revolution in the high jump: the Fosbury (sp?) Flop? Same principle.

Funny story: a couple of years ago a friend comes up to me in the parking lot and said
that he'd gotten a good chuckle watching my buddy getting into my whaler, AH,
rather ungracefully. He didn't notice that I was standing next to my truck and there
was no boat trailer. He was talking about my buddy Kwaika's boat, and I was the
buddy (Kawika hits the climbing gym 3-4 times a week, and is graceful getting into
his boat even with his weight belt on). ;-) That prompted me to work on style
points. I think I'm up to about about 5 on a scale of 10 now. ;-)

Sometime I have to get video of Adm. Linda coming over the side. All slow motion,
no strength moves. She does it when I'm setting up the camera in front of the ladder
and she's jumped over before the first dive to cool off.
 
And a way to avoid dropping the weight belt: Put a loop of 1/2 to 3/4" webbing in the
back, figure 8 shapped. The belt goes through the top half, clip into the bottom half
before you take it off. I used to do this on boats where the concern was dropping the
belt on a camera in the boat. Don't just drop the belt to the end of the tag line, LOWER
it.
 

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