Safety first: Abandon ship!!

As a sailor, your best liferaft is actually your boat. It is much bigger and better built for sea conditions, so the guidance is to stay with your boat as long and possible. You would only want to get into the liferaft if your boat was on fire or sinking. They say that you should never step down into a life raft, only step up ie the boat is actually sinking and is lower than the raft!

On Escapade, we have an Ocean Safety ISO 9650 liferaft suitable for four people. It is situated in a hard canister in a purpose built cradle in the pushpit rails towards the back of the boat. We can launch it manually, but it also has a special hydrostatic release which will launch the raft if the boat is sinking.

When inflated, the liferaft is like a large padding pool with a tent on top and water pockets below to aid stability. It also has a short webbing ladder hanging down from the entrance to help you get into it. However, having tried this fully clothed with an inflated life jacket, it is still not easy… and that was in swimming pool with no waves or swell!!

The liferaft also has other safety equipment inside including flares, a torch, sponge, signal mirror, knife and of course a repair kit and seasickness tablets!

Whilst there are some emergency kit items in the raft, we need to prepare for being in the liferaft for some time, so we would need other things too. We have set up a grab bag. Exactly what it says on the name…a bag (or in our case box) that you grab on the way off the boat. This has emergency food rations, water, first aid kit, fishing kit, thermal blankets and more seasick tablets!!

An EPIRB is a type of emergency locator beacon. It is a portable radio transmitter that, when activated, transmits a continuous radio signal. This signal is detected by satellites operated by an international consortium of rescue services (Cospas Sarsat) which can detect emergency beacons anywhere on earth. The consortium calculates the position of the beacon and passes this information to the appropriate local first responder organisation who use the information to locate airplanes, vessels and persons in distress and in need of immediate rescue.