Are flares legally required if

[maxi77]

[ QUOTE ]
Epirb + VHF versus flares = chartplotter vs charts?

Gizmologists vs Traditionalists?

[/ QUOTE ]

Now where does that place those who suggest that both have their uses and use both?

I would suggest that when one actually needs rescue having everything will be prefered.

 

[Guest]

Along the lines of "you can't have your cake and eat it too ...", I'd like to know what would happen if:
Say you're in mid-channel and decide there's an emergency (undefined).
Having discharged all your pyrotechnics (worst-case example) without anyone coming to your rescue, you bravely battle on bailing the boat/ under jury rig/ rudderless (make up the rest yourself ...) and upon entering a French port, you're asked to display your flare pack for inspection.
If using the flares renders you illegal for not having 'em, it kinda makes a nonsense of the whole legal thing.
Of course this scenario is highly unlikely - but it's possible ...

 

[Danny Jo]

[ QUOTE ]
The point about flares is that they do a job which is covered in part by other safety kit, but not in full. And nothing in the armoury of the yachtsman is so tolerant of being packed in a liferaft and forgotten about until you need it.
Yes if I ever have to take to a liferaft I would ideally be taking with me a VHF, an EPIRB, a mobile phone and a handheld GPS, but I'd also want Flares, so when I sight anyone that might be able to help I can attract their attention in an immediate and utterly unambiguous way.

[/ QUOTE ] Congratulations, seriously, to Flaming, Refueler and others for some intelligent, well-argued, informative and entertaining contributions.

 

[Refueler]

[ QUOTE ]
No, I am not being selective - I am just reflecting the paucity of hard information available. Yes, there are probably many incidents where flares have been used, but no sytematic way of recording them so that one can make an assessment of the facts.

Remember flares date from a time when there was no other form of communication. The world has changed and they are simply less relevant than in the past. As to whether they are completely irrelevant is open to debate, partly because there is so little information on their real effectiveness in action.

The real advances in safety have come from prevention rather than cure - that is avoiding getting into a dangerous situation in the first place - and minimising the negative consequences. All this means that the number of situations where the last ditch action, such as firing a flare, is needed is very small. I think people recognise this, and the variable record of success and concentrate their efforts of avoidance.

[/ QUOTE ]

Conversely - no-one has given sound 100% reasoning to NOT carry or use them.

If the use of flares means 1 life saved - it's worth it. If use of other methods means hundreds of lives saved - they are worth it. If one life is lost because any one of the items flares or other are missing - that's tragic and unneccessary.

I actually despair that on such a subject that people insist on statistics, evidence, etc. before they can accept an item of safety.

Do you believe in God ? Show me the evidence ?

Do you believe earth goes round the sun ? Show me evidence and proof ?

No good quoting any professor or Kepplers laws etc. - go-on prove it so.

Life unfortunately is full of things that we have to trust and accept. I for one hope that crewing on another boat I don;t have to use flares or any survival item. But heaven forbid if I need them and they aint there !

 

[oakum]

===Conversely - no-one has given sound 100% reasoning to NOT carry or use them.

If the use of flares means 1 life saved - it's worth it. If use of other methods means hundreds of lives saved - they are worth it. If one life is lost because any one of the items flares or other are missing - that's tragic and unneccessary.

I actually despair that on such a subject that people insist on statistics, evidence, etc. before they can accept an item of safety.===

Hallellujah, sense prevails

 

[pennycar9]

Oh I do hope so. By the way are legally required?????!!!!!! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[maxi77]

Perhaps some one with more experience of the French can tell us whether the law simply requires in date flares or does it require in date unused flares

/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[Tranona]

You misunderstand what I am trying to say. Never have said there is no need for flares. Simply saying they no longer have the relevance they once had. And you cannot ignore the fact that the number of documented occasions they are used is very small and their effectivenes can be questioned.

"Safety" is not about absolutes, it is about risk assessment in its true meaning and appropriate action. Suggest you read RNLI advice which is all written from that premise. In this country we have avoided prescription in favour of education and choice and I think can safely say with success as measured by the low accident rate. This means however, that some people base their decisions on "belief" and some on a more rational basis (even if the rationality is individual!).

Just like life really.

 

[l'escargot]

[ QUOTE ]
...So you deliberately go to sea without devices that can indicate to a rescue helicopter the direction and strength of the wind when he comes to your rescue...

[/ QUOTE ]
I think you will find the modern rescue helicopter has modern technology on board that gives more accurate wind speed and direction than the pilot looking out of the windscreen to see which way some smoke is blowing.

 

[Pye_End]

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So you deliberately go to sea without devices that can indicate to a rescue helicopter the direction and strength of the wind when he comes to your rescue.

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It is very easy to use emotive words to sell safety gear. In fact a generally good way for a salesman to sell anything!

If you asked whether you should have a liferaft, the answer will be almost always always yes, but ownership of such items is probably still a minority.

Any safety equipment will be a matter of decision based on risk averseness; experience/knowledge; how big your pockets are; how big your boat is; where you sail etc. For example a dinghy is probably more likely to get into difficulties than a well found yacht, but the expectations for a dinghy to carry flares are pretty low.

So ask the question: should you have flares, the answer can only be yes, but in the real world it is perfectly acceptable not to have them, so long as the consequences are considered.

As to the opening question, as far as I am aware the advice that flares on a UK boat in France are not compulsory, but having out of date flares is an offense in itself.

 

[peterb]

Risk and safety

Let's have a slight change in our thinking.

First, there is no such thing as safety. True safety implies a total absence of danger, and that never happens.

Second, you cannot quantify safety. You cannot say "I am 90% safe"; it makes no sense.

Third, you can quantify risk. You could say, for instance, that in a Channel crossing there is a 2% risk that a ship will be seen on a collision course, and that you would have to take action. That means that in a 100 crossings you might expect to have to take action twice. (I wish the risk were that low!)

But then you could look at the risk that you might have to initiate a Mayday for some reason, and the risk that your Mayday might not be heard, and so on. Surely the point of the discussion here is to consider how the real risks attached to small boat sailing can best be reduced (note: reduced, not eliminated). And, can the risk be reduced to an acceptable level?

Who was it that talked about known and unknown knowns, and known and unknown unknowns? Because the concepts become very real when you're in a small boat in a big sea. Particularly that 'unknown unknown'. And it's in that field that I look at my 'risk reduction' techniques and wonder whether my risk is acceptable or whether I could reasonably reduce it without unreasonable expenditure. That's always going to be a compromise; yes, I might be safer (i.e. have a lower risk) if I carried two life rafts, but does the reduction in risk justify the increase in expenditure? Not just legally (and I know that to comply with the commercial code some boats have to carry more than one raft), but justify to my own evaluation of the risk? And my compromise might not be your compromise; not just because we might have different 'acceptable risks', but also because we might have different methods by which we reach that level of acceptability.

So do I carry flares? Yes. And one reason is because I once rescued three people from a boat which had no flares. No-one ashore had seen the capsized Mirror, half a mile offshore; they had nothing with them to raise an alarm, and were fortunate that we were close enough to see their total inversion. Two were small children, already hypothermic by the time we got them out of the water.

Yes, no-one expects Mirror dinghies to carry flares; we also were in a dinghy, but my first action on getting ashore was to buy some red smokes and a couple of hand-held reds. I've never sailed (at sea) without flares since, even though we now have DSC VHF, an EPIRB, liferaft and hand-held VHF. Even with all the later electrickery, my own feeling is that flares give a risk reduction which more than balances their cost.

 

[Refueler]

Maybe I have misunderstood what you are trying to say. Because on reading each post - you appear to be sitting on the fence with a tendency to say Flares are out-dated and not worth carrying. Problem is perception - a common trait these days unfortunately. The perception is that you tend to the non-carriage of flares.

As I posted before 1 life saved or hundreds ? does it matter ? Life is the important fact here. That brings me to the French possibility of fines for out of date flares on board. Well IMHO - if they are taking that stand, I would hazard a guess that they are trying to ensure you carry IN-date flares. Possibly it has escalated to try and insist you dispose of old to replace with new. But like many things gets mis-used in practice - becoming you should not have old on board whether there are new or not. (Only a possible reason for it ... I don't know ...and I haven't seen any logical explanation for it).
For me - I want to keep old and new on board even if only one old works - that's one more than the new pack. And lets be honest - I think the number in a pack not enough. I tend to buy separate anyway and not in packs. I have a proper flare canister as used on ships. So I replace one by one at intervals and spread the cost instead of one hit. This staggers cost and also ensures I have a good supply of old and new. If French don't like that - sorry but we will just have to differ.

Thought just occurred to me. If it is against law to carry out of date flares on board - then I can pretty well say that majority of commercial ships should be fined. Replaced flares are usually still on board and may be used for deep-sea demos etc.

 

[maxi77]

He may be able to work out the wind he is flying in what he wants to sea is the wind where you are and where his swimmetr will be dropped. It is very normal for a helicopter pilot to ask for a smoke to be set of making all sorts of approaches because he can see that as he flies without playing with his instruments.

Also remeber many SAR helicopters are not that new

 

[l'escargot]

They are new round here and very seldom request smoke, except for identifying the boat as opposed for wind direction. I don't recall any exercises where smoke is used which would indicate it is exceptional rather than normal or a military practice as opposed to the MCA.

 

[matelot]

[ QUOTE ]
Why stop at flares? If you are going down the legal argument road, what about liferaft and epirb (a personal one for everyone onboard?). Are you going to get sued for not carrying these?

[/ QUOTE ]

Not likely but the RYA and the MCA both recommend that you should have certain flares on board. They do not recommend epirbs and liferafts in the same way for coastal voyages.

If you were to get sued for negligence (which is a very rare but not impossible event) they would be trying to prove you had not exercised a reasonable level of care. In doing that the court would take into account your level of skill / knowledge (so what would be expected of a YM would be different to what was expected of a DS for example) and they would judge against a standard of good practise established by, for example, what the RYA and MCA recommended.

So a YM crossing the channel hits a buoy and sinks the boat could be sued for negligence and in establishing negligence the absence of flares along with other issues would be relevant.

Nobody is saying this happens every day and that you should carry all safety euqipment you can get on board. Its simply correcting the view stated earlier that because its not a legal requirement to carry flares, the absence of them could never be raised in a civil case. All relevant facts would be considered

 

[toad_oftoadhall]

[ QUOTE ]
So ask the question: should you have flares, the answer can only be yes, but in the real world it is perfectly acceptable not to have them, so long as the consequences are considered.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yup. Well said.

 

[Tranona]

Perhaps I should explain more about my approach, which preceded getting involved in researching marine accidents, but has been "hardened" as a result.

To my mind it is not looking at the consquences that is valuable, but at the causes. Take liferafts because I have read more about this than other issues - but you can read the same for flares. I applied what I had been researching for many years, and that is the cause of "disasters" in a very wide sense. To paraphrase Milton Friedman they are always and everywhere man made. Therefore the way of reducing disasters is to remove the causes. Have a look at the history of mining and steam engine disasters for instance. Find the causes, eliminate as far as possible the causes that result from human action or lack of action and they (almost) go away.

If you look at the documented cases of yachts foundering and needing liferafts, flares, helicopter rescues etc - about 15 in the last same number of years, but not one a year. They are all individual, most (but not all) are not catastrophic, but are the end result of a sequence of human errors. There are only 3 identifiable circumstances surrounding foundering, Collision (3 catastrophic, 2 following sequence of errors) 4 structural failure (2 keels falling off, one rudder falling out, one general failure of systems leading to an abandon ship decision). The rest (6) overwhelmed by conditions.

So, my strategy is to avoid getting anywhere near these circumstances, because random chance is outside my control anyway. Therefore my need for "emergency" equipment is minimal - which is why I am now questioning the "received wisdom" that flares are essential, or even desirable.

If on the other hand I raced regulalrly pushing a boat to all its limits, I would indeed have all the equipment because the chances of my needing it would be that much higher. But do I need an 8 man Ocean spec liferaft on my Bavaria charter boat which rarely goes out of the sight of land and when I have failed to find any evidence of a Greek charter boat foudering. Indeed you could say the same about UK charter boats. Only one of the incidents mentioned above involved a bareboat charter, although another was a charter boat but on delivery with a professional crew.

If you read the accident reports further you find that the equipment in general does not perform well - although to be fair there have been huge improvements, particularly liferaft design as a result of experience.

As I said in an earlier post, a similar approach is taken by the RNLI. Prevention is better than cure. Of course there will always be individual cases where specific equipment is a lifesaver - because of human failure along the line somewhere. Thankfully such situations are rare, and the more we know about them the better we can avoid a repeat.