Ok...Your planer board has flipped; what would you do?

[drichitt]

I posted on another thread about one of our boards flipping twice yesterday and within 15 seconds the board righted itself. We got lucky. Ok, aside from the obvious like you shouldn't be pulling boards once it gets rough, what would be your course of action if you do flip a board?

Yesterday was my first experience with a flipped board. I use boards built by Skip and they have been great boards, but even well built boards have their limit. I have heard all of the horror stories from the board diving and getting stuck in the mud, diving and coming straight back at the boat and boards swinging across the back to the other side to meet the other board. Any of these conditions are going to have a bad ending or do they have to? Continuing forward is only going to make it worse. The board has flipped because it is rough which means you are probably dealing with 20+ knot winds, so turning off the engine (going to neutral) is going to have the same results except it will be in slow motion.

My conclusion was the best thing to do is to immediately unclip the flipped board and let it go. Crew's responsibility would be to immediately reel in the 3-6 planer rods connected to the flipped board starting with those closest to the boat. You are going to lose your clips, or maybe they just slide off the planer line and stay attached to the rods' main line. Captain's job would be to place a MOB on the chart-plotter and work to maneuver back to the lost board. With only a single board this would not be as difficult. You would want to cut back on your speed so as not to cause the other board to flip. It would probably make since to have the crew start pulling in the planer rods on the other side as you work your way toward the loose board and hopefully be able to do a drive by and grab it. All this assuming you were able to keep your eye on it.

Any thoughts?

Wanted to post this over on TF but feel it would get lost in the peanut gallery.