Abandon Ship ! Liferafts don't work

[sarabande]

hmm. Not only don't the self-launching liferafts not open, but the crew stay in the area and are endangered by rubbish surging upwards.


Something wrong somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQEqGGLW8mE

 

[Kelpie]

Could it be that the video cuts off before the boat had sunk enough to pull the painters on the liferafts? They can be quite long, IIRC...

 

[Biggles Wader]

I dont think they had much time to choose to stay in the area or leave it.

 

[OceanSprint]

As soon as they knew sinking was a possibility, wouldn't it have been better to inflate a raft alongside, ready to abandon ship into?

 

[salar]

As soon as they knew sinking was a possibility, wouldn't it have been better to inflate a raft alongside, ready to abandon ship into?

Probably busy getting lifejackets on, that vessel went down pretty quickly.

 

[Pladdatoo]

This has been discussed before and I remember it being pointed out that at 1.09 one of the crew is entangled in a line and dragged under. Thankfully he gets clear of the line and surfaces
.
Terrible near tragedy.

 

[prv]

Could it be that the video cuts off before the boat had sunk enough to pull the painters on the liferafts?

I think this is fairly obviously the case, at least for the raft that's visible to the left of the boat before it sinks. It looks to me as if that's bobbing at the end of a rope, some but not all of the painter having been pulled out. It won't inflate until the boat has sunk to the full length of the painter, which may be up to 25m on commercial rafts.

The second raft that bobs up next to the crew may or may not be attached to the boat, but it certainly hasn't had enough painter pulled to inflate before the video ends.

Complaining that they haven't swum clear within a few seconds, while fully dressed and wearing bulky lifejackets, in the shock of having their boat sink from under them, seems bizarre.

Pete

 

[prv]

As soon as they knew sinking was a possibility, wouldn't it have been better to inflate a raft alongside, ready to abandon ship into?

As soon as sinking was a certainty, then yes in the ideal case they'd have inflated a raft and got into it. You don't inflate the raft at the point of "possibility", because tied alongside "just in case" with nobody in it it's liable to get damaged against the boat, swamped by waves, or blown away. If you blow up a raft, you get into it immediately and then you leave.

In the real world of a sinking fishing boat, I hardly think they can be blamed for failing to do what seems obvious in slow time from our armchairs.

Pete