Quite a few issues of safety, in the yachting world, come down to the preferences of the skipper and crew. There will never be universal agreement on how (or if) to use tethers, or on where a life raft should be kept, or on whether an extra EPIRB is a better investment than an AIS-B transponder upgrade.

We can, however, apply some general principles of risk analysis and risk mitigation at the design stage. The maritime world already has some ways of figuring this out, but for today, I think I'll shake things up a bit with some principles from a different field: ionizing radiation.

The outboard's back from the shop (Ward's Marine, Kingston, ON) and the lower gear unit is in pieces. Unfortunately, the damage is worse than we had hoped, and rebuilding with new parts would not be economical. Here's the story of what happened, as told by the shredded innards of the gear set.