Clam boat capsize - Ardnamurchan

Of course there is nothing wrong with wearing a lifejacket, mine has a harness & thigh straps & I wear it IF there is any risk of me ending upp in the 'oggin. It's the idiocy of saying that you MUST wear a lifejacket in all circumstances. I would never wear mine on the Laser, but I will wear a shorty wetsuit top or a bouancy aid if i don't have the shorty.

It's like promulgating the motto "speed kills" when it is inappropriate speed, inexperience or inattention that generally causes accidents.
 
Searush said:
It's like promulgating the motto "speed kills" when it is inappropriate speed, inexperience or inattention that generally causes accidents.
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Actually, you can do inappropriate speed, inexperience or inattention, even after having drunk twice yer bodyweight in alcohol...........it's the hitting things that kills (and even then not usually).

"Simple Slogans for Simple Souls":)
 
Searush said:
Of course there is nothing wrong with wearing a lifejacket, mine has a harness & thigh straps & I wear it IF there is any risk of me ending upp in the 'oggin. It's the idiocy of saying that you MUST wear a lifejacket in all circumstances. I would never wear mine on the Laser, but I will wear a shorty wetsuit top or a bouancy aid if i don't have the shorty.

It's like promulgating the motto "speed kills" when it is inappropriate speed, inexperience or inattention that generally causes accidents.
Click to expand...


Agree with every word.

I like the comparison with the insanely misleading and simplistic 'speed kills' message.
 
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toad_oftoadhall said:
So in Ireland someone legally sails his 10m Irish boat without a PFD on in Late January.

Without warning the boat sinks and he ends up in the water still without his PFD. The good news is his Liferaft has bobbed up next to him.

His liferaft is under 7m.

At this point it is illegal for him to climb out of the freezing water into the liferaft.

"Well done, the Irish" :-)
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Do you really think any legal system and any judge operates as stupidly as that? I know we all see legal decisions we cant understand but judges are not idiots. Even most policemen arent.

Classic case of bickering on a forum and going to the silly extremes or argument.
 
Searush said:
It's like promulgating the motto "speed kills" when it is inappropriate speed, inexperience or inattention that generally causes accidents.
Click to expand...

Thats all a matter of semantics isnt it - and the practicality of getting a message across which means that the message has to be short and simple.

Speed is the major factor in road deaths since it's the deceleration ( and possible body penetration) that kills. There's also a relationship between speed and the probability of an accident occurring because our reaction times are relatively fixed. But you can hardly put all that in a message and if you did half our poorly educated pop wouldnt understand the relationship between velocity change, time and distance and the forces that are generated.
 
toad_oftoadhall said:
Ok, I will.

I've picked up my copy of the highway code from the book shelf and turned it over.

Yes, it's still written there.

Are you saying it's wrong? Why?




I've found it online for you:
http://tinyurl.com/nam64o
Can you explain why it's wrong?
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I'm not getting involved in the lifejacket argument (though I normally wear one when I'm on the boat) but I think you've misunderstood the quotation. If I understand it correctly, it is saying that if you are involved in a collision, you have a one in two hundred chance of being killed. That's not quite the same thing as saying that one in two hundred of the population is killed on the roads, no?

Anyway - back to the melée.......
 
Ooops; I take it all back; I've just been playing with my calculator.

Approximately 3,200 people die in RTAs each year in the UK; that's about 0.0053% of the population (assuming it's sixty million). Average lifespan is, say, eighty years, so lifetime chance of being killed is 0.424%, or round about one in two hundred.

Apologies :o
 
OK Here is why I wear a lifejacket whenever underway and suggest those who I sail with do too.

1. I've been call to too many drowning incidents.

2. As soon as cold water hits skin, there is the impulse to gasp - cold shock. The lifejacket will keep me afloat while I choke up ocean.

3. Secure in the lifejacket, I am less likely to panic.

4. With a lifejacket on, I am not using energy to keep me afloat, so I have more energy to keep warm and help with recovery.

5. If am not using arms and legs to keep afloat, I'm not pumping so much cold water over my skin, therefore staying a little warmer. Hopefully I'll be less hypothermic when help arrives.

I don't think we should be forced to wear life jackets as the Irish authorities do. To me wearing a lifejacket is common sense. I know there is a low risk of going overboard, but I find a lifejacket no hinderence so it's better on than off.

Additionally, if a member of crew or indeed the skipper falls overboard, I want my job (whatever it might be) in the recovery operation to be as easy as possible. A lifejacket improves the ability to keep the MOB in sight, gives something else to grab onto and mean the MOB might give that bit more of a helping hand getting back on board.
 
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I just find the priorities a little odd:
Fishing boat capsizing and sinking raises little comment.
Not wearing LJ raises tirade of criticism.

I'd like to see more prevention of fishing boats capsizing and sinking. It's allegedly 40 years since we put a man on the moon, surely we can keep a fishing boat right way up?

Don't get me wrong, I have had occassion to appreciate my LJ having been over the side of a racing keelboat. I've worn LJ's enough to have chucked them away as 'worn out'. I always wear buoyancy in a dinghy. But a life jacket is a piss poor substitute for keeping your ship afloat.
 
I wonder about the short tether. If you are capable - in terms of freeboard, personal strength etc - to clamber back on board unaided, well then well and good. However others may wish to get to a stern boarding ladder.

John.
 
jhr said:
Ooops; I take it all back; I've just been playing with my calculator.

Approximately 3,200 people die in RTAs each year in the UK; that's about 0.0053% of the population (assuming it's sixty million). Average lifespan is, say, eighty years, so lifetime chance of being killed is 0.424%, or round about one in two hundred.

Apologies :o
Click to expand...

Have a look at the Mortality Statistics published by Govt annually - last 2005 covering up to 2004.

Highlights. Annual deaths vary 512000-569000, but falling and 512000 for 2003 and 4. Deaths through accidents/injuries pretty constant at 16000 So roughly 3% die from non-natural causes. Of these, I think just over 3000 die as the result of road accidents is about right (figure is falling and I expect it was in the report somehwere but I nearly died of boredom after 20 pages). So 1 in 200 deaths as the result of road accidents is about right.

Deaths at sea from memory - ignoring deaths resulting from coastal accidents is well under 100 pa - less than 1 in 5000. For my normal consultancy fee I could get the actual figures if anybody wants.

Back to the real thrust of the thread. If one ends up in the water there is little doubt that survival times are longer if wearing a lifejacket. What is not clear is whether a non-wearer might have lived if a jacket was worn - there are so many variables.

The key issue to look at is what caused the accident as prevention is better than picking up the pieces afterwards. This is where there is little of value to learn from causes of accidents to fishing boats that can be transferred to yachts. Just read the MAIB reports on the two classes to see what I mean.
 
jhr said:
Ooops; I take it all back; I've just been playing with my calculator.

Approximately 3,200 people die in RTAs each year in the UK; that's about 0.0053% of the population (assuming it's sixty million). Average lifespan is, say, eighty years, so lifetime chance of being killed is 0.424%, or round about one in two hundred.

Apologies :o
Click to expand...

Well, we haven't seen Alan D's figures yet, so we might still both be wrong.
 
jason -and the arguenauts said:
Do you really think any legal system and any judge operates as stupidly as that?
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Just because you aren't likely to be convicted for something doesn't make it legal. You won't get done for 71 in a 70 limit but it's still breaking the law.

This assumes that S Ireland has no statutory defence of necessity.

However, apart from giving me amusement, what the example was really about was to demonstrate the nonsense of having hard and fast personal rules about these things - eg the crass "Fishermen near water must wear LJs."
 
Interestingly enough, all British waterways & riverbank employees are required to wear lifejackets when on duty near water. Good old H&S rules. Fortunately, modern auto LJ's are not much problem to wear.
 
I queried it because it seemed too high, particularly in the light of steadily falling death rates from road traffic accidents.

I tried to find a source of reliable data but got bogged down, so decided to post anyway. Since then I have found figures for Scotland for 2005 to 2008 which show total deaths around 55,500 anually and deaths from "transport accidents" around 300 annually. Given that the great majority of transport-related accidents are on the road, the figure of 1 in 200 would seem to be about right, so my apologies for challenging you.

(With roads as risky as that, why do we bother so much about the risks of boating?)

Off to eat humble pie ....

Alan
 
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