Evan Gatehouse wrote:

My wife and I discussed this when offshore cruising. Our
thought was that either of us fell overboard at night with
the other sleeping, you're dead. Simple as that.

MOB at night is not necessarily the end if are lucky enough to do it in
the tropics in a major shipping lane.

When my wife and I were off the coast of Panama in the shipping lanes
we heard a call around 7am from a Ukrainian crewed freighter about a
MOB. A crewman had gone overboard at around 1am, and the freighter
was, for some reason, leaving the area. We were very close to the MOB
position the freighter gave, and so we started moving towards it,
though we didn't think the guy would be near there anymore since there
was a 1-2 kt current. A Panamax container ship also heard the call and
came charging to the scene (its interesting to have container ship pass
50 yards away going full speed) and, incredibly, spotted the guy within
about 20 minutes about 5 miles down current from where he went
overboard. By the time the Panamax managed to turn around and come to
a stop 100 yards from the MOB we had caught up. The Panamax had to talk
us to his position because we couldn't see him until we got within less
than 100 feet, even though conditions were not particularly rough. We
recovered him in using our dinghy (much easier than trying to pull him
directly on board, which may have been impossible). The Ukrainian
freighter came back for him, and we handed him over an hour later.

What I learned from this is that its almost impossible to see someone's
head from the deck of a sailboat if there is any chop at all, but that
if you can get a large vessel involved in the search, even hours later,
your odds improve immensely.

Andy