danbuoy / MOB gear mounting - what do you have?

contessaman

contessaman

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my previous vessel, a racing yacht, had the oh-so-trendy 1970s IOR style moulded in tube in the transom for danbuoy stowage. I must say, when we practised MOB drills it worked really well. I'd chuck the horseshoe over and the drag would pull the danbuoy out from its tube. the drogue was rolled up inside the tube with the danbuoy.

Having moved on to a considerably more frumpy vessel for family reasons, I look at my current MOB equipment stowage and think I would be doing well to get the lot over the side inside a minute, which frankly is no good.

the worse situation we as a family could experience is probably me going over the side. So ideally my wife should be able to deploy the kit easily and quickly, leaving her attention free to handling the boat in order to pick me up. we sail husband wife and young baby.

I'd be really interested to hear all of your 'top tips' and details about the stowage and speedy deployment arrangments for such equipment of your vessels.

I have the following gear:

1x horseshoe buoy
1x fixed whip danbouy with flag (2metres)
1x jotron strobe light
1x horseshoe drogue

the horseshoe and the light have their own brackets but these dont seem up to the task. they can either be secure but take ages to deploy or speedy to deploy but threaten to self deploy either at sea or even on a windy day on the mooring!

as always - thanks in advance

contessaman
 
I have exactly the same kit as you list - well the light isn't a Jotron, forget the type but not a cheapo.

I agree, have wondered how long it would take a crew to deploy; I could do it quickly as I set it up, so it's another thing to add to the briefing.

I have wondered about a transom tube, but the danbuoy I have now has a pretty large diameter float, it would be a monster tube & hole in the transom which I'm not keen on.

As I haven't found a tube of the right diameter the rolled up danbuoy flag is held by an elastic to the split backstay, so that would deploy on being chucked; all the items are tied to each other so it would be a case of lifting the ring & danbouy, the light & drogue would follow.

So something to brief crew on, doing so would be a check the light is still working.

Incidentally although the danbuoy has a light and cost about twice as much as my first sailing dinghy ( ouch ! ) I added SOLAS reflective tape to the flag and have a couple of chemical glo-sticks on it held by elastics on the basis it's hard to have too much help.
 
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Watching with interest having just purchased a extendable Danbuoy from a fellow forumite, I have not got a clew where to fit it...

Presenly have horseshoe buoy and light, in standard bracket easy enough to deploy... Danbuoy hmmm still thinking on it... Plastic drain pipe and elastic might be good solution but how to rig it is perplexing...
 
thanks seajet. yes the tube was pretty huge - say 8 or 9" in diameter, that was on the OOD. theres no way I could have that arrangement on my current boat - the transom slopes the wrong way for a start.

shock cord sounds like a good idea. Ref what you were saying about briefing crew, its fairly intuitive to remove if something is just bungee'd in place so thats another thing going for that arrangement.

I discarded the cheap fixed light when I picked up the jotron at beaulieu - a strobe is infinately better.
ditto on the 3M reflective tape too. that stands out like the dogs b@llocks when you shine one of those 1000000 candle power searchlights on it


my danbuoy has the bulb of lead at the bottom, which means that if I put it in a PVC tube wide enough to take that it would be flapping all over the place the rest of the time.

let see what others come up with, photos would be great if anyone has a wierd and wonderful arrangment!

another point of interest, my surveyor said I should have 2 horseshoes - used to when I raced with a big crew. But these days if both adults went over, there wouldnt be anyone left to deploy a second buoy!
 
My danbuoy is held just under the float by two big plastic terry clips on the back of the horseshoe bracket; the foot & balance weight of the danbouy in a slightly loose loop of elastic around the bottom of the pushpit leg, resting on the quarter deck.

The drogue is rolled up and tucked under one arm of the horseshoe where it rests in the bracket, seems OK.
 
I have a horseshoe drogue (Lifesling), mounted in its bag on the pushpit. I also used to have a danbuoy residing in a piece of PVC pipe, secured by jubilee clips to the pushpit. The danbuoy mast got bent, so I threw it away and didn't replace it as I generally use the boat singlehanded these days.

Ordinary horseshoe buoys are, I reckon, pretty well useless.
 
I'm not familiar with the IOR transom tube arrangement, so bear with my idiotic meanderings! Could you not mount a suitably sized tube at deck level, rising toward the stern to prevent accidental deployment and maybe overhanging a little so as to prevent the lead weight bouncing off the transom on its way down? Then the principle of throwing the buoy and the rest just follows should still work. My own mounting tube is upright, simply because it was already there and necessitates each component being launched individually by hand... Time for a rethink.

Rob.
 
rob2 said:
I'm not familiar with the IOR transom tube arrangement, so bear with my idiotic meanderings! Could you not mount a suitably sized tube at deck level, rising toward the stern to prevent accidental deployment and maybe overhanging a little so as to prevent the lead weight bouncing off the transom on its way down? Then the principle of throwing the buoy and the rest just follows should still work. My own mounting tube is upright, simply because it was already there and necessitates each component being launched individually by hand... Time for a rethink.

Rob.
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hi Rob, the 'IOR transom tube' (to coin a phrase!) was a built in horizontal tube in the hull moulding of a yacht so you're left with a neat hole in the retrousse stern. the coolest yacht in the world - IMP - had one so did the swan 39R it yielded so I think every other yachtmaker in the late 70s wanted one. I suppose it wasn't just a cool thing it was a great way to deploy a danbuoy and also got rid of the windage/damn nuisance of the thing waving about. Google a picture of IMP the bionic boat or an OOD34 to see what they were like.

I suppose practically theres no specific reason you couldn't have a PVC pipe flat along the deck. Theres no way of doing that on my current boat though - the only place would be outside the cockpit coamings and there, the gunwhales curve in quite heavily as the beam narrows so that would not be possible. it would be the shape of a bannana!

I know safety should come first, but a flat pvc tube on the deck would look pretty awful too!

We need to combine our brains to come up with the ultimate PBO forum rapid deployment mob relase device!

....im just waiting for some wise guy to suggest clipping on and not going over in the first place....!
 
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contessaman said:
thanks seajet. ........I discarded the cheap fixed light when I picked up the jotron at beaulieu - a strobe is infinately better.
........!
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Not everyone agrees on that, there were some tests where a fixed light was much easier to spot, and particularly get close to.
It might have been to do with waves, if your strobe is sat in a trough 2/3 of the time you miss a lot of flashes?
These days it should not be hard to have a few LED's up the flag pole on continuously, it only needs to work for say an hour?

I am firmly with the RORC message that it must be all got over the side within seconds, by the helmsman, while he is steering.

Agree on the 3M tape though, amazing how few horseshoes have it. Looking for a boat in the moorings at Salcombe, mine lit up very strongly from a fair distance using a 2AA dive torch.
By the way, I used to keep the old horseshoe on deck on the mooring and in harbour, the posh one with light etc locked away.
The old one has been much closer to getting used in anger.
 
My lifering light is a very bright flasher too, but I suspect like Contessaman the light on the danbuoy is a steady white, so I reckon that's covered.

I have SOLAS tape in liberal chunks on the horeshoe inc the edges - as mentioned it didn't come with any even though not a cheapo one - and also on the top of the danbuoy flag, it still rolls up in stowed position held by the elastic on the backstay - I suppose the traditional small tube on the backstay would prevent the flag fading in U/V so I'll keep looking for something suitable.

Edit; yes that Swan does look sexy - ' Aft Torpedo's, Fire ! '
 
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Rob,

as the flag has SOLAS reflective tape all along the upper horizontal edge on both sides it has to be rolled; the good news is that the tape holds it out rigidly when the elastic is off.
 
Dan buoy used to live in a bit of drain pipe jubilee clipped to pushpit upright. The bottom had a disc of ply fixed into it that the weight sat on. The flag lived inside a canvas sleeve which was in turn fastened to the back stay by a short bit of cord. When the danbuoy was dropped, the sleeve released the flag. Now we have an inflatable danbuoy instead: the rigid on kept dying in the uv. Also have an inflatable horseshoe ring: takes up less space on an already crowded pushpit.

Edit: the old danbuoy flag was home made out of a high vis jacket. One of those bright yellow ones with reflective stripes. Stands out well in torch light and cost about £3.00 for the jacket.
 
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duncan,

I'm sure your inflatable lifering is good kit, but I had a nasty lesson years ago.

I had a thing like a large yellow hand grenade, the idea being it was easier to throw in wind than the normal horseshoe, when hitting the water it would inflate into a ring.

After quite a few wet sails when the thing had got pretty soaked, I and crew decided we had no faith in it - also we were itching to try it ! - so I dropped it over the side when we were at a pontoon; it went straight down like a brick !
 
Jon buoy, Danny Buoy, horse shoe x1 for coastal x2 for offshore, throw line. We also have AIS transponders for individuals
 
Seajet said:
After quite a few wet sails when the thing had got pretty soaked, I and crew decided we had no faith in it - also we were itching to try it ! - so I dropped it over the side when we were at a pontoon; it went straight down like a brick !
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When I was laying up the boat last year I lifted off the horseshoes and found one was suspiciously heavy. It turned out that the cover had split and it was full of water. I am pretty sure it would have sunk if thrown to some poor soul in need.

I have a danbuoy in the garage, because (a) the light came off and (b) I haven't a clue what one is supposed to do with them. I don't think I have enough hands to extend its telescoping mast and lob it overboard while steering the boat. Or is it supposed to extend itself somehow?
 
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