life raft home truths
May 30th 2007 20:09
Some home truths about life rafts:
I have never entered a life raft in anger so what I write is not from first hand experience but is mainly anecdotal and my experience of having done three professional maritime sea safety and survival courses and preparation for being able to teach the subject myself. So I am not an expert but have a working knowledge of what is required.
In the recreational field and I believe that is mainly whom I write for, we try to emulate what our big brothers do out there in the “big stuff”. Not many recreational boats have the space and not many of the skippers have the money to buy the top of the range gear that commercial vessels do. Manufacturers however tend to be the same so they may make smaller and cheaper versions of a product but as their name is on it they can’t make a dodgy product as their name is everything in the big pond of commercial shipping. As and example when a ship comes into dry dock it has specialised company representatives that do nothing for months but service that ship with safety gear, or paint, or rigging, machinery and so on. So it is safe to assume we are getting pretty good stuff from name companies.
There is an Australian standard that most gear must be equal to. Well more than that it must actually be stamped approved by and there often we have a problem in that the standard can’t often move as fast as the improvements happening in the industry. So while you may look longingly in catalogues at a piece of equipment new on the market, if it doesn’t meet approval you will have to wait. Or take a chance.
So to life rafts. With any sort of luck you will never need to use yours. What, you don’t have one? You claim you don’t need one! Well yes of course its expensive and only required when the ship is sinking, grounded on some rock in the middle of a forlorn ocean or burning out of control just in site of land. However yours will not be delivered to you in time for that kind of emergency. You may have done the right thing and now have a perfectly suitable liferaft sitting on the deck of you boat awaiting an emergency. Is it in survey? Probably 60% of privately owned life rafts excepting those owned by sailors who race offshore a lot would be out of service. Yes it costs a bit to service your raft but it needs to be done. If you miss one year it will be easier to miss two and if you have done something twice it is already a habit. So you are in the habit of leaving your life raft un-serviced, not good.
When you take your raft in for service what do you have done. Epirbs should be replaced to the newest available and I believe the Gpirb is now at a fair price. (it contains a GPS and can pin point you to within metres within a couple of hours) Replace batteries, replace water and have packed anything that you particularly want on board. Later I will list the basics.
Getting into your raft is all about being rescued. First think your self lucky you escaped your sinking ship. It should have sunk by now or you probably shouldn’t be in your raft. The safest place to be on the ocean is still in your boat until the very last moment. Before you leave your boat be sure to drink as much water as you can possible hold and then drink some more. Make sure you and every crew member takes a seasick pill. And it doesn’t matter if they kick and scream about chemicals in their body they have to do so. Everyone is going to get sick in the raft. No exceptions! From the moment you decide that you are going to leave your boat you should be putting together everything you are going to need on the raft. Forget personal belongings except for what will fit in the grab bag. Extra water, extra flares, batteries and torches. Clothes, hats medical equipment or extra first aid and perhaps a spare hand held radio.
You should have managed to get out a may day with your position but if not rely on your gpirb or epirb to get the search under way. At the very least know that your loved ones will alert the authorities to start a search as you have not contacted them by a certain time or date. This is a touchy subject. We don't want our family to worry so we tell them not to. The reverse should be true, worry about me unless you hear from me. Be anally retentive about being in contact with them. They are your best help ashore. The authorities will search and search but give up when it is starting to cost too much and hopes have faded to nothing. This is when your family and friends should show their mettle by “stirring the possum” and getting private searches under-way or refunding the official one. You are drifting out there in the best life raft available to man with all the water you can drink for a couple of weeks (you can survive without food for almost a month). You have remembered all your back up medication and you are in a pretty good state despite the raging storm outside or the hungry sharks. You need to know they are looking for you and will keep looking.
More tomorrow.
Getting into your liferaft: Trust me, it is the least pleasant place to be on the ocean! It is marginally better than being adrift in the water with or without a life jacket. But the moment you are on board your chances of being recovered have increased dramatically.
There is an adage that you should step UP off a sinking ship into your liferaft. This is the best scenario but not always practical. However the idea is that you stay dry getting into your raft. Don’t jump onto the cover as you may hurt people already inside. The cover should handle the jump without tearing but it is not a good idea to have to do this. Launch your raft as per the instructions. Remember to be tied off to a strong point on your boat until everyone is aboard. When boarding you should be wearing your life jacket. A point here. Your life jacket is designed to withstand fire for two seconds. Make your own decision when your ship is on fire! When wearing a life jacket your movements are severely restricted so be prepared to struggle a bit. Step onto the outside of the raft pontoon then directly on board. Sit down until everyone is on board. Cut the painter holding you to your ship and paddle free of the sinking/burning/infested vessel. Deploy your EBIRB or GPIRB and prepare for rescue.
You should be rescued quickly but it will be dependent on weather conditions, availability of shipping in your vicinity and search aircraft. No water for the first twenty four hours. You should have loaded up before you boarded so you will need to be to taking a leak soon anyway. There will be enough water on board for three days with half a litre per person. The water is in 100 mil plastic bags. No food will be required for up to a month. Depending on how your body can handle the stress. These days life rafts are packed with biscuit not glucose. The biscuits taste something like a shortbread. You have about ten thousand kilojoules per person. Eat only when you have water to wash it down. Fish hooks are only there for recreational purposes. The only part of the fish you can enjoy is sucking the juices from the backbone. All the rest is going to dehydrate you. By all means slice it and dry it in the sun till you have water in good amounts. Similarly seaweed should not be eaten but dried.
You will have sponges on board to wipe the inside of the raft for condensation. Wipe the bottom of the raft to dry it out from salt water. There is a rain water gathering point for replenishing fresh water. The bottom of the raft feels like a giant water bed that needs topping up. It can be pumped up to insulate you from the water. You need as many clothes as you can wear, include a warm hat. You have to crap over the side in site of others but lets hope they promise not to look. Clean your self with your hand dipped in salt water. No loo paper on board and not even a yachty bucket. Vomiting will be provided for by plastic sick bags but as these are best used to collect rain water try to prevent seasickness.
There are many chapters in books dedicated to survival in life rafts and I can’t help you with everything in a couple of sentences.
Recovery. You will be found either dead or alive. The condition you are in is entirely up to your will to live! Setting off a 406 EPIRB ensures that rescuers know of your predicament, who you are, the boat you were on, within two hours and can pinpoint you on a chart to a couple of nautical miles. For you it is a matter of hurry up and wait. When rescuers arrive they will be in a chopper or ship. A fixed winged aircraft might have spotted you first and dropped off emergency supplies and tried to contact you by radio. You have probably removed your life jackets to be able to move about the raft. Don them now because you will be weak, exhausted and in no condition to take a chance on a dip and drowning in front of your rescuers. The helicopter will pull you up on a sling, a basket or rigid stretcher if you are injured. Your rescue boat will try to approach from downwind and may have out scrambling nets to climb up the side or a boarding ladder. If you are too weak to climb a sling might be lowered down to you.
Take your grab bag with you. It should contain your wallet, passports, never used credit cards and maybe a phone card to ring home. Remember to thank everyone involved in your rescue!
More tomorrow.
I have never entered a life raft in anger so what I write is not from first hand experience but is mainly anecdotal and my experience of having done three professional maritime sea safety and survival courses and preparation for being able to teach the subject myself. So I am not an expert but have a working knowledge of what is required.
In the recreational field and I believe that is mainly whom I write for, we try to emulate what our big brothers do out there in the “big stuff”. Not many recreational boats have the space and not many of the skippers have the money to buy the top of the range gear that commercial vessels do. Manufacturers however tend to be the same so they may make smaller and cheaper versions of a product but as their name is on it they can’t make a dodgy product as their name is everything in the big pond of commercial shipping. As and example when a ship comes into dry dock it has specialised company representatives that do nothing for months but service that ship with safety gear, or paint, or rigging, machinery and so on. So it is safe to assume we are getting pretty good stuff from name companies.
There is an Australian standard that most gear must be equal to. Well more than that it must actually be stamped approved by and there often we have a problem in that the standard can’t often move as fast as the improvements happening in the industry. So while you may look longingly in catalogues at a piece of equipment new on the market, if it doesn’t meet approval you will have to wait. Or take a chance.
So to life rafts. With any sort of luck you will never need to use yours. What, you don’t have one? You claim you don’t need one! Well yes of course its expensive and only required when the ship is sinking, grounded on some rock in the middle of a forlorn ocean or burning out of control just in site of land. However yours will not be delivered to you in time for that kind of emergency. You may have done the right thing and now have a perfectly suitable liferaft sitting on the deck of you boat awaiting an emergency. Is it in survey? Probably 60% of privately owned life rafts excepting those owned by sailors who race offshore a lot would be out of service. Yes it costs a bit to service your raft but it needs to be done. If you miss one year it will be easier to miss two and if you have done something twice it is already a habit. So you are in the habit of leaving your life raft un-serviced, not good.
Getting into your raft is all about being rescued. First think your self lucky you escaped your sinking ship. It should have sunk by now or you probably shouldn’t be in your raft. The safest place to be on the ocean is still in your boat until the very last moment. Before you leave your boat be sure to drink as much water as you can possible hold and then drink some more. Make sure you and every crew member takes a seasick pill. And it doesn’t matter if they kick and scream about chemicals in their body they have to do so. Everyone is going to get sick in the raft. No exceptions! From the moment you decide that you are going to leave your boat you should be putting together everything you are going to need on the raft. Forget personal belongings except for what will fit in the grab bag. Extra water, extra flares, batteries and torches. Clothes, hats medical equipment or extra first aid and perhaps a spare hand held radio.
You should have managed to get out a may day with your position but if not rely on your gpirb or epirb to get the search under way. At the very least know that your loved ones will alert the authorities to start a search as you have not contacted them by a certain time or date. This is a touchy subject. We don't want our family to worry so we tell them not to. The reverse should be true, worry about me unless you hear from me. Be anally retentive about being in contact with them. They are your best help ashore. The authorities will search and search but give up when it is starting to cost too much and hopes have faded to nothing. This is when your family and friends should show their mettle by “stirring the possum” and getting private searches under-way or refunding the official one. You are drifting out there in the best life raft available to man with all the water you can drink for a couple of weeks (you can survive without food for almost a month). You have remembered all your back up medication and you are in a pretty good state despite the raging storm outside or the hungry sharks. You need to know they are looking for you and will keep looking.
More tomorrow.
Getting into your liferaft: Trust me, it is the least pleasant place to be on the ocean! It is marginally better than being adrift in the water with or without a life jacket. But the moment you are on board your chances of being recovered have increased dramatically.
There is an adage that you should step UP off a sinking ship into your liferaft. This is the best scenario but not always practical. However the idea is that you stay dry getting into your raft. Don’t jump onto the cover as you may hurt people already inside. The cover should handle the jump without tearing but it is not a good idea to have to do this. Launch your raft as per the instructions. Remember to be tied off to a strong point on your boat until everyone is aboard. When boarding you should be wearing your life jacket. A point here. Your life jacket is designed to withstand fire for two seconds. Make your own decision when your ship is on fire! When wearing a life jacket your movements are severely restricted so be prepared to struggle a bit. Step onto the outside of the raft pontoon then directly on board. Sit down until everyone is on board. Cut the painter holding you to your ship and paddle free of the sinking/burning/infested vessel. Deploy your EBIRB or GPIRB and prepare for rescue.
You should be rescued quickly but it will be dependent on weather conditions, availability of shipping in your vicinity and search aircraft. No water for the first twenty four hours. You should have loaded up before you boarded so you will need to be to taking a leak soon anyway. There will be enough water on board for three days with half a litre per person. The water is in 100 mil plastic bags. No food will be required for up to a month. Depending on how your body can handle the stress. These days life rafts are packed with biscuit not glucose. The biscuits taste something like a shortbread. You have about ten thousand kilojoules per person. Eat only when you have water to wash it down. Fish hooks are only there for recreational purposes. The only part of the fish you can enjoy is sucking the juices from the backbone. All the rest is going to dehydrate you. By all means slice it and dry it in the sun till you have water in good amounts. Similarly seaweed should not be eaten but dried.
You will have sponges on board to wipe the inside of the raft for condensation. Wipe the bottom of the raft to dry it out from salt water. There is a rain water gathering point for replenishing fresh water. The bottom of the raft feels like a giant water bed that needs topping up. It can be pumped up to insulate you from the water. You need as many clothes as you can wear, include a warm hat. You have to crap over the side in site of others but lets hope they promise not to look. Clean your self with your hand dipped in salt water. No loo paper on board and not even a yachty bucket. Vomiting will be provided for by plastic sick bags but as these are best used to collect rain water try to prevent seasickness.
There are many chapters in books dedicated to survival in life rafts and I can’t help you with everything in a couple of sentences.
Recovery. You will be found either dead or alive. The condition you are in is entirely up to your will to live! Setting off a 406 EPIRB ensures that rescuers know of your predicament, who you are, the boat you were on, within two hours and can pinpoint you on a chart to a couple of nautical miles. For you it is a matter of hurry up and wait. When rescuers arrive they will be in a chopper or ship. A fixed winged aircraft might have spotted you first and dropped off emergency supplies and tried to contact you by radio. You have probably removed your life jackets to be able to move about the raft. Don them now because you will be weak, exhausted and in no condition to take a chance on a dip and drowning in front of your rescuers. The helicopter will pull you up on a sling, a basket or rigid stretcher if you are injured. Your rescue boat will try to approach from downwind and may have out scrambling nets to climb up the side or a boarding ladder. If you are too weak to climb a sling might be lowered down to you.
Take your grab bag with you. It should contain your wallet, passports, never used credit cards and maybe a phone card to ring home. Remember to thank everyone involved in your rescue!
More tomorrow.
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