In preparation for setting off around the world, one of our jobs is to review our safety equipment. Generally, this falls into two categories: emergency equipment for if you abandon ship (either accidentally or deliberately) and preventative equipment to stop you abandoning ship! The first category includes equipment that you hope you never have to use, so it is very important to get the equipment in the second category right!
Lifejackets
When sailing at sea, in rough weather and at night, we always wear our lifejackets.
There are many designs of lifejacket available and most of them have the necessary safety features. This can make choosing one difficult. However, one crucial feature to consider is that it should be comfortable, as this means that you will actually wear it!! The ones we have are 170N Offshore BackTow Lifejacket Deck Harness from Teamo and are very comfortable.
Lifejackets are obviously designed to support you should you end up in the water, but they are also designed to help you stay on the boat with special attachment points.
Check out Teamo’s website by following the link in the side bar.
Tethers
Like lifejackets, tethers come in all shapes and sizes. We have Spinlock Performance Safety Lines with two hooks and a loop. We attach the loop to the attachment point on the lifejacket and then we have two hooks which can be attached to various strong points on the boat. These may be metal fixings on the deck or jackstays.
The two hooks have a long or short line to use depending on where you are on the boat. Also having two hooks means that when moving around you can always have one clipped on.
Jackstays
To be able to move around the boat more safely, we run webbing from strong points across and along the length of the boat. The idea being that anywhere we need to go on the boat, we can be ‘tied on’.
We thought carefully about where best to put these jackstays – we need to be able to access the whole deck area, but need the webbing not too close to the edge of the boat, so the tethers keep us onboard, not dangling over the edge!
you don’t look very impressed Martin!!
That’s his concentrating/serious face!!
As I said before, be safe. X
Hi,
We are doing lots of things to try and minimise the risks, whilst still preparing for the worst case. my attitude is that if we are prepared, it will never happen!!
x