It’s a long way down from here
Synergy between Harken companies ties together high-efficiency rope handling equipment with world class rope-safety and rescue training.
Harken’s experience working with the rescue and emergency services has resulted in a whole new approach to performing safe mast work aloft. Great things can happen when world-leading knowledge and expertise from different disciplines collide, including revolutionary outcomes that turn long established practices on their head.
Much of the safety gear on today’s yachts is unrecognisable compared with that of a couple of decades ago. It has even become routine to equip crew members with a personal AIS unit, so that if they fall overboard their position can be clearly shown on the chartplotter of their own boat and those of any other vessels in the vicinity. And the days when people spent months in a liferaft are, we hope, long behind us.
Yet the procedures – and equipment – for climbing the rig have barely changed in half a century or more. Granted, bosun’s chairs and climbing harnesses are now more comfortable than older designs but the basic techniques remain the same. As we will see later, the accident statistics even for climbing a rig in harbour are frightening and in today’s world would be deemed unacceptable in any other field. So, there’s clearly something wrong with the prevailing attitude that “everyone has always climbed the rig like this, so it must be OK”.
Even in a properly fitting harness, suspension trauma can lead to loss of consciousness in a surprisingly short time.
The route by which Harken came to this realisation – and, more importantly, figured out how best to address the subject – is unsurprisingly a complex one that involves several units within the group of safety and rescue businesses that Harken has placed alongside its legendary marine hardware division. One of the key figures in the story is Pierre Masse, a former professional sailor with three America’s Cups under his belt as mast man, who joined the company in 2007 and is now directeur général of Harken France, based in La Rochelle.
During his professional sailing days Masse says he fell from a rig once himself and has harrowing first-hand tales of seeing other competitors falling, as well as a ‘big problem with one crew member who started turning around the mast and was stuck … with no one really able to climb and help him.’
Sadly, statistics show that these experiences are far from unique. While comprehensive figures in such a diverse industry are difficult to compile, Harken has unearthed documentation showing 19 people have died while aloft in the past decade alone. Over more than 10 years, they can document 32 deaths.
It has long been known that statistics for serious injuries or fatalities mask a far larger number of less serious accidents and near misses. In 1931, for example, the American insurance company superintendent Herbert W. Heinrich analysed 75,000 accident reports in industrial settings. Across his wide data set he found that for every accident that causes a major injury there were a further 29 with minor injuries and 300 additional minor accidents or near misses.
This premise has been updated several times, including in 2003 by American multinational Conoco Phillips, which found that for every accident with a fatality there were a further 30 with serious injury, 3,000 near miss incidents and a colossal 30,0000 examples of risky behaviour and operating procedures. Every time we climb a mast using existing widespread practices we therefore place ourselves in danger of a high impact catastrophe.
Even without injury, gear failure or a tangle in the rig can cue the need for rescue.
One of the most shocking recent instances in the marine industry concerns a 30ft two-handed performance yacht on passage between Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria in January 2023. One of the crew went aloft but ended up entangled in the standing rigging and was injured. Neither his fellow crew member, nor rescue teams from Sasemar, the Spanish maritime rescue and safety organisation, were able to bring him safely to the deck and his body was eventually recovered 19 hours after the start of the incident.
Equally, there are plenty of stories of visits aloft in harbour going wrong, including an 18-year-old junior deckhand who fell from the rig of a 60m (196ft) schooner while cleaning the mast. A local newspaper, the Jamaica Observer, reported that the incident happened “when the ropes tying her to the mast came undone”. A 22-year-old superyacht deckhand/assistant engineer also tumbled to his death while cleaning the rubrail of a 74m (243ft) motor yacht, suspended using a safety harness and bosun’s chair attached to a fender hook.
It should come as no surprise that Harken France wasn’t the only Harken company that had identified a need to improve safety aloft. ‘The team at Harken ProCare, our superyacht and grand prix technical support and service group, brought our direct attention to it through Elevated Safety, which is one of our rope access and rescue training businesses, with their observation of the professional rigging side of the equation, using techniques that would not be deemed safe in general industry,’ says Harken safety and rescue division commercial director Sean Cogan. ‘Being that the work is of a professional nature, we decided that they would have the aptitude to take suggestion not directly from Harken, but rather from Elevated Safety, which is organised to train professionals for difficult rope access and rescue solutions.
‘The Harken Pro Care Team initiated the conversation with Elevated Safety, first to seek advice on whether this was a problem worth advocating for a solution,’ he adds, ‘and secondly to use the resource we have in building deliverable curriculum and training development tools to fit the operation.’
‘Climbing a mast is the same as climbing a tree or a building – generally you need a full training and a certificate to do this type of job, because it’s technical and dangerous,’ says Harken ProCare manager Mark Gardner, who’s responsible for providing customer and technical support to all of Harken’s superyacht and grand prix racing clients.
For any rescue, devise a plan and establish proper communications at the outset.
For any rescue, devise a plan and establish proper communications at the outset.
Mark Wiss, Harken’s director of global grand prix and custom yacht sales, is another force behind the development of this initiative. ‘A really nice thing with Harken is that over the last decade or so, we diversified our business into non sailing activities,’ he says, ‘having realised our products are there to manage rope and that we had a lot of customers buying our equipment for non-sailing applications.’
Generally these were sailors who recognised the usefulness of Harken products for use in their own non-sailing related businesses. ‘It was a really eyeopener for us,’ adds Wiss. ‘Fast forward to now and we’ve done a really good job in creating a space focussed on safety and rescue.
‘Whether they’re climbing a wind turbine or the side of a tall building to wash windows, people need training, qualifications and certified equipment before they can work aloft. It’s the same concept for sailing and we are able to take the lead in this marketplace. So it’s gone full circle where the sailors who use our sailing equipment are now able to be trained through our safety and rescue division.’
Figuring out what steps are required to make change happen is typically a far more complex matter than simply identifying the need for it. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a multidisciplinary corporation, whose DNA is fundamentally grounded in a search for world class solutions, to assemble the knowledge and expertise needed to successfully challenge entrenched groupthink across an entire industry. This was therefore a big initiative with buy-in across the many sectors in which Harken companies are now leading forces.
An important factor that became clear at an early stage is that, without proper training, simply having the very best rope safety equipment on board is not enough. Correct and appropriate operating procedures tailored to each situation are equally important, which means training has to be an integral part of the offer.
Nevertheless, Harken never intended to dictate exactly how mast climbing needs to be done. Instead the plan was always ‘to offer our experience in how different methods could be of use to make the work safer, to enable the rescue of a co-worker, and possibly to add operational efficiency with technique and equipment options they may not have seen before,’ Cogan told Seahorse.
Masse says Harken France didn’t initially have the ‘experience, the skill or the knowledge’ to pursue the project in house. However, expansion at Harken at the corporate level was creating a perfect opportunity. The marine industry has always been prone to accentuated peaks and troughs in each economic cycle and Harken started to diversify outside of its core marine markets after the financial crisis of the late 2000s.
Operators in sectors as diverse as theatre, crowd management at major sporting events, tree surgeons and first responders were already using Harken equipment – thanks to its low friction, high efficiency nature – and were pushing for items to undergo the rigorous certification needed to use them for human suspension at height. In 2011 Harken officially recognised the potential of these markets, creating what is now known as the Harken Safety and Rescue division, along with a plan to rapidly become a world leader in the sector.
This was achieved in part via a number of strategic acquisitions and in typical Harken fashion the company looked to harness the world’s best talent in the world of training at height. Given that this knowledge was not available in the marine industry, the company acquired Illinois, USA-based Elevated Safety which was already widely recognised as a world class leader in training for rope access.
As yachts continue to grow, safe operations aloft become ever more challenging. The J Class Yacht Lionheart’s 58m mast height makes for excellent real-world training.
This company was founded by first responders with years of experience in urban fire rescue and even today virtually every Elevated Safety trainer has a day job as a firefighter or emergency medical technician. They also have teams on standby to be flown around the world to take part in the most technically challenging rescue operations imaginable in both maritime and terrestrial domains.
In the past these have included leading missions to recover crew from large commercial ships that are lying on their side following a capsize. In 2023 Elevated Safety itself acquired Wyoming, USA-based Peak Rescue to further boost the company’s expertise, especially in the realms of backcountry and mountain rescue. These trainers train to specific standards using a curriculum certified by the Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians (SPRAT).
In a three-year period two Harken Inc teams have won the world’s most demanding rescue competition – GRIMPDay. This is effectively the America’s Cup for the world’s rope rescue community, bringing teams from around the world, including firefighters, civil protection, army, police and others, to compete under duress on tasks inspired by real-world situations that involve saving people in precarious situations and under time pressure.
We can be in no doubt, therefore that Elevated Safety has some of the very best training personnel in the world, who are on a par with the most seasoned rescue brigades internationally. The firm also has a longstanding and illustrious client list that includes the US Coast Guard’s 90m (294ft) three-masted barque Eagle, where Elevated Safety is responsible for leading cadet training for work aloft.
What are the magic ingredients that make the Harken Group’s Safety and Rescue training world class? ‘Our team has been hand selected over 15 years and primarily drawn from first responders, so the comfort level in elevated stress situations is seemingly normal to them,’ says Cogan. ‘We also have experience as an emergency response salvage contractor and our teams have extensive international offshore maritime salvage experience and are comfortable in a marine environment. Coupling that with Harken’s detailed experience in sailing, we saw the unique opportunity to learn from our subject matter experts on both sides and combine skills and knowledge to produce a learning product that can be applied globally through a pre-existing network of professionals who are determined to help and available wherever in the world we need to be.’
He adds: ‘My personal view of world class isn’t purely based on my impression of our skills being better than anyone else’s, but rather having the necessary pieces in place to deliver and learn with the support of a global network.’
Under Harken’s ownership, Elevated Safety has grown rapidly and now has operations in Illinois, Colorado and Florida in the US, while its newest office in La Rochelle, France is well placed to run training courses throughout Europe. Today the Harken Group therefore encompasses two domains in which it has world class knowledge and expertise – the marine industry, plus safety and rescue.
With the two divisions now active in both North America and Europe, the knowledge and expertise necessary to address the safety issues identified by Harken France and Harken ProCare is now available within the group. It stands to transform procedures for working aloft in all sectors of the marine industry.
Elevated Safety in France has developed a two-day course that covers all the background knowledge and regulatory frameworks associated with safely working at height, use of appropriate equipment and rescue techniques. The course is classroombased for half a day and on boats for the other day and a half.
Even crews quite used to operating aloft can find themselves outside the comfort zone when faced with going up to transfer and evacuate an unconscious casualty.
Key premises include a double protection method for mast work, with specific protocols for deck operators and those aloft to follow that were specifically developed for work at height when afloat. There’s also a rescue method that can be implemented if a person aloft is unable to descend without assistance. The importance of this element should not be underestimated. In addition to more obvious risks of illness or injury, being suspended aloft for more than a few minutes has potential to lead to so-called suspension syndrome or trauma, in which blood circulation around the body is impaired and may eventually lead to a loss of consciousness.
At the time of writing, the first courses for professional riggers have taken place in France, led by training director Alex Gomez de Miranda, a professional firefighter with significant rope rescue expertise. ‘We started with pro riggers because they were very receptive to the safety issues,’ says Masse. ‘and the certification is also useful for their insurance, which creates an additional incentive for them.’
They have also trained the crew of the 43m (142ft) J Class yacht Lionheart. ‘There’s almost a gap in our industry as there really aren’t clear standards of safe practice,’ says first mate Alex Tower. ‘So it’s cool that Harken has bought Elevated Safety and now they’re bringing professional training back to sailors.’
‘There are a lot of practices we can use just in day-to-day life aboard the boat to make things safer and I think we’ll certainly add what we’ve learned to our existing drills we perform on board,’ he adds. ‘Going forward, I feel we are a lot safer knowing the crew have been involved in this training.’
Further courses are already planned for Yannick Bestaven’s Maître Coq Imoca 60 campaign ahead of his participation in this year’s Vendée Globe, and the Koesio Ocean Fifty team. With commercial shipping increasingly poised to adopt sail assistance this is also seen a big potential market and Elevated Safety has already been working with SY Canopee, the recently launched 120m (400ft) sailassisted ship that carries parts for the Arianne space programme between Europe and launch sites in French Guyana. Her four giant wing sails, each of 363m2, reduce fuel consumption by one third at a service speed of 16.5kts.
The Safety Aloft course is tailored to different end users, recognising that a solo round the world sailor has different needs to a fully crewed vessel. Considerations for superyachts, megayachts and marine professionals such as electronics experts are different again.
Importantly, Masse cautions that having more people available on board doesn’t automatically translate to safer practices: ‘With a crew there is a greater risk of accidents due to co-activity on the boats, so the risks are different,’ he says. ‘We have many examples of incidents and accidents that are due to, for example, a communication problem with a halyard pull that continues while the technician is already at the top. Or the winch not being locked out, or the use of self-tailing on an electric winch while someone’s foot is jammed on a spreader.
‘The main thrust of our work is to raise awareness of the risks involved and the procedures to be put in place to reduce them,’ he adds. ‘Sailors already know how to climb the mast, so we’re just here to help them make their practice safer.’
The precautions and understanding needed for this go far beyond simply having a redundant halyard and attaching them to the bosun’s chair or harness with a knot rather than a snap shackle.
‘So, in the same way that you are trained to deal with a fire on a boat or flooding, training how to access the mast must be anticipated and the skills maintained,’ says Gardner. ‘That’s where Harken / Harken ProCare and Elevated Safety come in, offering training adapted to the boat for crew members, including the creation or addition of personal protective equipment, awareness of hazards and risk analysis, plus access and rescue techniques.’
The complementary skill and knowledge bases of Harken’s core marine division, Harken ProCare and Elevated Safety have now been fully integrated.
An important factor here is that providing courses and training is by no means a new activity for the ProCare division, which has been doing this for many years to enable superyacht and grand prix race teams to maintain diverse types of equipment in the field. Harken ProCare will therefore be the first point of contact to help arrange training customised to the equipment and rigging found on each yacht. Working with Elevated Safety, this division can also help create safety and rescue plans for each boat or ship and perform onboard safety audits and training that conform with international regulatory standards governing working at height.
On the product side, Harken makes rope access and rescue equipment that will be already be familiar to many sailors. In addition, items such as its multipurpose ascent/descent devices are developed in a very similar manner to the renowned sailing hardware, though collaboration with the most experienced rescue trainers in the world. This has helped create products that previously didn’t exist, while improving existing lines to be more efficient and easier to use. This range now includes LokHead winches, Ninja foot and chest rope ascenders, as well as the Clutch multipurpose rope ascend/descend device.
Nevertheless, all trainers take an unaligned approach and will recommend the best equipment for each specific situation, even if it’s produced by companies with which Harken competes in other areas. This also applies to the curated safety aloft equipment kits that Harken and Elevated Safety tailor to the needs of each boat and on which their crews can be trained.
Through its specialist divisions and subsidiaries, Harken is therefore able to combine the high-efficiency rope handling equipment we’re all accustomed to using with a line-up of the most talented rope safety and rescue training professionals in the world. It’s an unbeatable combination that will markedly reduce risk to those who whose professional life involves working aloft, as well as improving safety for legions of amateur racing sailors and long-distance cruisers.
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