Just a follow-up as I had a chance to experiment this weekend; I missed my trap and went off the boat in double-trap conditions Saturday. I dropped the stick grabbing for the handle, but retained the mainsheet. I had a very good view of my crew trapping hard to keep the boat up as I dragged along behind. The boat heeled up pretty high and then started to round up - the crew did a great job of coming off the trap just as the boat flattened out. As we decelerated, I was able to reel myself to the rudder just as we passed head-to-weather in a pretty clean roll tack. I sent the crew to the new high side of the boat to keep it flat while I used the rudder as a foothold and popped back onto the boat. I moved up the tramp, collected the stick, sheeted in and we were off again while the crew gathered the mainsheet and traveller tail that was still off the low side.

I was off the boat about 5-6 seconds, I would guess - certainly less than 10. I was able to see what was happening very clearly and was prepared to release the mainsheet if it seemed I needed to. Still being in contact with the boat allowed me to feel how it was reacting as well, and the slowing as it rounded up was obvious. Roger Jenkins did an outstanding job as crew and we had a fair dash of luck, but I think that hanging on the the boat saved the flip and clearly kept us in the race. As we got resettled, I was laughing pretty hard. I said I hoped someone had seen it - Roger said he hoped nobody had. I think I'll add a clip to my harness to run the mainsheet through and try it out.

All that said, I think a rule requiring a tether is inadvisable.