World Voyager Dies When His Hand Is Caught in an Electric Winch

Faulty Mechanism Kept Running; No One Cut the Line

Peter Swanson Dec 3

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A world voyager died when his hand got caught in a line as it turned around an electric winch, pinning him onto the winch assembly and “causing severe injuries to his arm and hand, trauma to his head and chest,” according to British marine investigators.

The Marine Accident Investigation Board (MAIB) said Lyall Babington, 74, caught his hand in the line and was “progressively pulled tighter onto the winch drum.” Investigators blamed a defective control switch, which sometimes caused the knee-operated winch to continue to operate even the operator had stopped pressing the button.

The accident happened on August 5 off the Isle of Wight on the south coast of England. Babington had set off from his native New Zealand three years earlier aboard Mollie, a 56-foot steel motorsailer.

Electric winches can be a godsend for older sailors, particularly if sailing shorthanded.

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According to the November 27 investigation report, Babington was undertaking a circumnavigation using volunteer crew, which paid him for expenses, for varying amounts of time. At the time of the accident there were three on board, two that had just arrived and another who had been with Babington for five months.

Here how MAIB set the scene for the accident:

The skipper informed the crew that they needed to raise the storm jib sail to try and improve the upwind progress of the vessel. To hoist the storm jib sail the halyard was usually taken to a powered winch at the aft of the cockpit where there were a pair of powered 24-volt direct current (DC) winches mounted on a pedestal. The winches were normally operated by pressing the control switches fitted to the pedestal with the user’s knee. Earlier on the day of the accident, the inboard winch had been used to hoist Mollie’s tender and the hoist rope was left turned around the winch.

Investigators said that when Babbington was caught in the tightening line, the crew pressed the control button trying to break the circuit. After several tries, the winch did stop, but by then Babbington was unconscious, and the crew radioed a Mayday. The call went out shortly after noon. The response was pretty quick:

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and rescue helicopter R175 were tasked. Both were on scene by 1249. The RNLI crew boarded the vessel and tried to free the skipper from the winch. As they did so, and without warning, the winch activated and released the skipper and he fell onto the deck. The RNLI crew performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and a paramedic from R175 was lowered onto the vessel. Despite CPR efforts, the skipper was declared deceased at 1305.

Investigators concluded that the only way to disable the electric winches was via a battery switch in the boat’s forward cabin. They noted that the system was not one of the name brands on the market and speculated that the winch had likely been installed by “a small boatyard.”

The report did not address the question of why the crew never thought to just cut the line or was not able to do so.

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