Though I can no longer sail solo, I still am oncerned with someone getting back on board in the open water. I carry a gunwale mounted aluminum boarding ladder which I can use for intentional swimming (not falling overboard. I also carry a web ladder in a bag mounted to the life lines (the lifelines run from the bow plate to theend of the gunwale at the stern. The bag containing the web boarding ladder falls about where the winch mount is. I try to get it as far astern as possible to keep the ladder from swinging under the boat as little as possible. Neither the web ladder or the swim ladder has any value if the boat is under way. The unanswered trick is how do I control the direction of the boat/speed if overboard -particularly since I use an autohelm) I don't know. I do relay on a handheld portable VHF to call for a maydayand rely on a tether to keep me connected to the boat. I also carry a block and tackle that can be connected by a crew member between the D ring on my pdf and a horseshoe ring on the boom with alocking cam cleat to haul me out of the water without the use of a ladder, if necessary. The horseshoe ring also serces to hold one end of my preventer. I guess the preventer could also be used as a hoisting mechanism.

I also carried on my pfd about 50 ft of llight line that line that I could have used to hold me to the boat as I released one end of my tether and slid back to the dingy. I could have easily started to climb aboard the dingy even though that endeavor would have sunk it. A dingy full of water is too much for the Ariel to carry as a load. The Ariel would have likely stopped and mostlikely have then come upwind luffing as well. That done, Once on top of the dinghy,I could have inched forward along the dingy gunwales and boarded the Ariel. Not elegant but doable in my better years. The bottom line in any case is that a man overboard is a mayday sitution (forget your pride in favor of saving life and call for help). Fortunately, in my better years, I never experienced an involuntarily MOB so the routine was only tested under benign sea conditions. I did try the web ladder in rough conditions and getting up again was tough and questionable whether a weaker/tired/cold individual could succeed.