Do I need a liferaft?

[Elessar]

Not sure why you worry about fire. Again, no evidence that any yachts have foundered at sea because of fire - in UK waters or involving a UK boat that is.

Plenty (relatively) of incidents involving fire, but all at anchor or in marina and usually caused by defective gas, refuelling petrol or fumes from substances like paint strippers or adhesives.

nonsense.

here's 1, there was also a sealine s34 that I know of that exploded in the solent this year, plus another boat just off chichester IIRC

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=227966&highlight=fire

I was on a boat with a fire some years ago - a mirage 28. We put it out but crikey it was a scarey experience. 5 seconds more reacting and we would have been in the water, it happened SO fast.

 

[photodog]

There was a Nelson sank near Salcombe last year, everyone on board (Divers...) were rescued from the water by the yacht "Dutch Angel" iirc....

 

[Searush]

I've managed 30 years sailing without ever remotely wanting to have one aboard, but I bought a used one last year & it sits in the aft cabin with a pile of other "might be needed one day" stuff.

You'll only NEED it if you are sinking or on fire with no-one else near enough to help. But you may well REALLY NEED it then! Like all this stuff, it a matter of risk assessment. The likelyhood of needing it is extremely low, but the consequence of not having one IF you do need it could be catastrophic.

Yer makes yer choice & pays yer money (if you decide to have one).

 

[photodog]

The liferaft is also a very good MOB tool... in fact it is my number two choice for recovery.... if you have a person in the water, and cant get them up the topsides, and its too rough to bring them over the transom... I am probably gonna go for that liferaft... especially if short handed.

 

[iangrant]

Better ............

to be looking at it than looking for it!


Ian

 

[Tranona]

Not wishing to contradict, but there was this one one off Shoreham, and then this one in Southampton Water, and then this one, an F34 based out of Gosport, all of which were discussed here iirc. I'm sure there must be others, but these were the three that immediately sprang to mind.

Cheers
Jimmy

The first one did not founder. Can't comment on the second as I don't think there has been a proper report yet and the third was at anchor (I believe).

Not suggesting fire is not a risk, just that it does not appear relevant in the fully investigated foundering incidents.

 

[Tranona]

I found your stats very hard to believe so did a quick google search. Took me about three minutes to come up with three rescues from life rafts in the last 5 years around the UK coast. I am pretty confident I could find some more as well.

In June 2010

http://www.mcga.gov.uk/c4mca/mcga07...s-releases.htm?id=6C76F5F4DE74476B&m=6&y=2010

IN Feb 2008
http://www.rnli.org.uk/rnli_near_you/news/news_detail?articleid=306546

In June 2008
http://www.rnli.org.uk/mob_guardian/mob_rescue

From memory there was also Hooligan V that flipped upside down a couple of February's ago in the English Channel, only a few miles offshore, the 4 survivors spent an hour in the water before they managed to free and inflate the life raft. The owner has been quoting as saying something along the lines of. If we had not got into that life raft the 4 survivors would not be alive today.

Suggest you spend a couple of hours on the MAIB website reading a summary of all the reports of foundering incidents involving leisure craft and then you will appreciate the "statistics" quoted are correct.

Remember the quesion is being asked by a "typical" leisure boater - and you don't find many of them involved in incidents that result in their vessel foundering. Your example of Hooligan illustrates the point perfectly. How many "typical leisure boaters" go to sea in the middle of winter in a structurally unsound inshore racing boat? Just read the report - would you have been on board willingly? If I was stupid enough to do that, I would want not only a liferaft but a permanent connection to the rescue services!

 

[jimmy_the_builder]

The first one did not founder. Can't comment on the second as I don't think there has been a proper report yet and the third was at anchor (I believe).

Not suggesting fire is not a risk, just that it does not appear relevant in the fully investigated foundering incidents.

The first one sank. The crew of the second one abandoned to liferaft.

Cheers
Jimmy

 

[dancing mermaid]

rescue from liftraft yesterday

Sunday, 31 October 2010 20:35 Lifeboat Rescues Two Fishermen After Ten Hours Stranded in Liferaft Featured
Two young fishermen are recovering today (Sunday 31 October 2010) after being rescued by lifeboat crew from Ballyglass RNLI. The two men were found in a liferaft 13 miles north of Belderrig in County Mayo after a lifeboat crewmember raised the alarm when they had not returned after to shore last night. Their fishing vessel had capsized and unable to raise the alarm the two men spent ten hours at sea in a liferaft waiting for help.

Ballyglass RNLI volunteer crewmember John Walsh contacted the Ballyglass Lifeboat Operations Manager when a fishing vessel had not returned to Porturlin when expected. Lifeboat Operations Manager Harry McCallum got in touch with Malin Head Coast Guard and the Ballyglass RNLI all weather lifeboat was launched at 11.49pm along with the Sligo based Coast Guard helicopter.

The rescue crews headed to the area where the fishermen were understood to be recovering pots from the water. The helicopter crew spotted the liferaft with the two men onboard and communicated the position to the lifeboat, which was nearby. The men had managed to remove their wet clothes and had put on plastic sacks to keep warm. They were recovered onto the lifeboat and taken to Ballyglass to recover.

Commenting on the callout Ballyglass RNLI Coxswain JT Gaughran said, " These two young men were extremely lucky. There had been nobody out searching for them until our crewmember John Walsh, who is an experienced fisherman, raised the alarm. Things can go wrong very quickly out at sea and every second counts. Thankfully conditions were moderate and once the search was underway they were spotted quickly."

The lifeboat pictured below returned to Ballyglass at 3am this morning with the two men onboard.

 

[Watson47]

A very apt post dancing mermaid .... I saw this news item this morning & thought of it immediately I saw this Thread. This boat sank before any alert was given & I have no doubt, knowing that sea area quite well, that those men would have died without a liferaft.

Slightly different application in that registered fishing vessels are compelled to carry approved liferafts. However, this 'compulsion' has evolved directly from the lessons of a great many tragedies and should not be ignored by any seafarer.

 

[Searush]

A very apt post dancing mermaid .... I saw this news item this morning & thought of it immediately I saw this Thread. This boat sank before any alert was given & I have no doubt, knowing that sea area quite well, that those men would have died without a liferaft.

Slightly different application in that registered fishing vessels are compelled to carry approved liferafts. However, this 'compulsion' has evolved directly from the lessons of a great many tragedies and should not be ignored by any seafarer.

The main reason for the regulation is that when their nets snag, fishing boats often capsize. I doubt that many on this forum will be dragging a trawl net behind their boat. Snagged nets is a common cause of lost trawlers, but seldom affect leisure boats.

 

[Tranona]

A very apt post dancing mermaid .... I saw this news item this morning & thought of it immediately I saw this Thread. This boat sank before any alert was given & I have no doubt, knowing that sea area quite well, that those men would have died without a liferaft.

Slightly different application in that registered fishing vessels are compelled to carry approved liferafts. However, this 'compulsion' has evolved directly from the lessons of a great many tragedies and should not be ignored by any seafarer.

There is much to be learned from fishing boats foundering, but little of it is transferrable to leisure boats. Fishing boats operate in very different conditions and face very different dangers. As Searush has noted, snagged nets is a major cause as are weight shifting leading to instability and severe adverse conditions. Only the last mentioned is a factor in yachts foundering and then very rarely. This is because few yachtsmen go out in adverse conditions, and if they do get "caught out", survivability in a well found yacht is very high.

 

[vandy]

Buy one, if you go with your family.

And if you go by yourself, again consider buying one as it saves emergency services' time finding you.

I hope you don't go boating next time (even coastal) without having a liferaft. Now it is a good time to buy one, as from December onwards the prices will go up for Xmas...

 

[Doug_Stormforce]

Tranona, I think you are moving the goal posts. You cant just dismiss incidents because they are not typical, (abandoning is after all not typical) or because they mess up your statistic.

How many "typical leisure boaters" go to sea in the middle of winter in a structurally unsound inshore racing boat? Just read the report - would you have been on board willingly? If I was stupid enough to do that, I would want not only a liferaft but a permanent connection to the rescue services!

I would guess it was fair to say that the owner did not know the keel was going to fall of. Had the yard who had done the work said to him “Your boat’s not sound mate, we got it all wrong” I reckon he might not have put to sea. Is it not typical to trust the professional that they have done their job right?

While you call it an inshore race boat it did its fair share of offshore racing- Cowes to Cascais 2006 she came second overall and first in her fleet, the same year she also did the Cowes to La Rochelle and a few cross channels.

Jimmy has also pointed out a couple of other incidents that specifically involved mobos but you have discounted them.

The first one did not founder. Can't comment on the second as I don't think there has been a proper report yet and the third was at anchor...
.....

Why dismiss them? The second one in particular was a motor yacht who abandoned to a life raft. Surely that is relevant to this thread.

Suggest you spend a couple of hours on the MAIB website reading a summary of all the reports of foundering incidents involving leisure craft and then you will appreciate the "statistics" quoted are correct.

Thanks for the suggestion/advice, and I can see now where the confusion has come from. Deriving a statistic from a site that does not provide all of the information is fatal. Not all incidents are reported on the MAIB site. Returning to my earlier point, just by looking at the links provided by other contributors to this thread proves that there has been more than the quoted 2 rescues from life rafts in UK waters in the last 5 years.

As far as the comparison to fishing boats goes- Nonsense, the sea does not discriminate between sailors, trawler men and motor boat owners. If these guys are running into trouble you can bet motor boaters are as well. Might be different causes but abandonment is not the sole right of the working class.

By all means buy one........ but a complete waste of money!

easy to say that when you are in the comfort of your home, knowing that when you do next go to sea your boat is equipped with one anyway.


That said I agree most people never need their life raft, but would add the day you need it you will be glad you have it. Getting back to the original OP. You should defiantly buy or hire one.

 

[RogerRat]

and then this one in Southampton Water, which were discussed here iirc.
Jimmy

Thanks Jimmy on the button as usual.

Firstly for all you guys still wondering about a life raft... this BRAND NEW boat was on it's delivery trip home after all the 'pdi' checks tittivating and minor adjustments. Brand new, as I say with Cummins engines in a Meridian 340. The boat belonged to a good friend of mine as was posted here at the time.

The owner 'PW' said it was less than 4 minutes from the time he spotted blue smoke from the port exhaust to him jumping into the liferaft with his coat on fire! He and his crew were burned, blistered and hair loss, frightening. This type of journey would quite often have an excited family on board. You'll also see from Jimmy's link it was just offshore at Calshot, you would have thought you swim in but as PW jumped for the raft his legs went into the water by the time he had scrambled up his legs were frozen, aching pain as this was Feb 8th.

For those of you that think you can always get in the dinghy, I bet you £50 virtual quid that you couldn't get 4 peeps in a dinghy off the Needles or St. Albans head in a southerly F4 with a bit of tide or Seaview or Culver point in F4 easterly. If you want to check out my theory just go to Osborne bay on a bright day in 12 knots of wind and try it!

If you don't own a raft you're nuts! imho of course

 

[Tranona]

Tranona, I think you are moving the goal posts. You cant just dismiss incidents because they are not typical, (abandoning is after all not typical) or because they mess up your statistic.



I would guess it was fair to say that the owner did not know the keel was going to fall of. Had the yard who had done the work said to him “Your boat’s not sound mate, we got it all wrong” I reckon he might not have put to sea. Is it not typical to trust the professional that they have done their job right?

While you call it an inshore race boat it did its fair share of offshore racing- Cowes to Cascais 2006 she came second overall and first in her fleet, the same year she also did the Cowes to La Rochelle and a few cross channels.

Jimmy has also pointed out a couple of other incidents that specifically involved mobos but you have discounted them.



Why dismiss them? The second one in particular was a motor yacht who abandoned to a life raft. Surely that is relevant to this thread.



Thanks for the suggestion/advice, and I can see now where the confusion has come from. Deriving a statistic from a site that does not provide all of the information is fatal. Not all incidents are reported on the MAIB site. Returning to my earlier point, just by looking at the links provided by other contributors to this thread proves that there has been more than the quoted 2 rescues from life rafts in UK waters in the last 5 years.

As far as the comparison to fishing boats goes- Nonsense, the sea does not discriminate between sailors, trawler men and motor boat owners. If these guys are running into trouble you can bet motor boaters are as well. Might be different causes but abandonment is not the sole right of the working class.



easy to say that when you are in the comfort of your home, knowing that when you do next go to sea your boat is equipped with one anyway.


That said I agree most people never need their life raft, but would add the day you need it you will be glad you have it. Getting back to the original OP. You should defiantly buy or hire one.

Not moving the goal posts. THe OP asked if he should have a liferaft if he is going further afield next year in a MOBO.

The answer to that question, based on the evidence of the officially investigated incidents is no. I accept the point about the three fire incidents, but I think you will agree they are extremely rare and all happened close to shore or at anchor.

It really is important to look at the background to each incident to understand how it came about, so that you can relate those circumstances to your own pattern of usage. so, for example, if I were taking a boat like Hooligan up channel in the winter, I would take more precautions than taking a well found cruising yacht out in the middle of summer. Equally, whatever you say, professional fishermen face a rather different set of risks as you will see if you read the reports of accidents that involve different types of seafarers.

Clearly not every incident is fully investigated, but all those that involve deaths are and many that do not but it is considered in the public interest to publish a report. There is an advantage in using "statistics" from this source as they are consistent and provide sufficient detail to learn from. Newspaper etc reports may not be so accurate.

The word "statistics" is in itself very misleading. There is no measurable pattern to such rare incidents - there are simply so few, particularly in relation to the level of activity, that it is almost meaningless to try to draw any conclusions of changes over time. For example, there are some years when there are no reports of serious foundering or deaths. That is why it is important to look at the underlying reasons. It is then that you find the common themes that I suggested earlier - information that is much more useful than just counting the numbers. Reading the detailed reports also challenges a lot of the popular myths of the effectiveness of some equipment.

What is really missing in this debate is accurate accounts of the much larger number of incidents that could have become more serious to identify what strategies were successful (or not) in containing the situation. You get a bit of this from most reports of serious incidents as they are rarely caused by one factor, but a series, some of which individually would not be serious, but the combination is.

 

[PaulGooch]

The problem with using MAIB is that not all incidents are subject to MAIB investigations.

I remember this one, as i knew the boat http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/4122645.Drama_as_boat_sinks_after_rescue_off_Portland/

It would not have been subject to a MAIB report. Although the report states the liferafts floated free and inflated, this is incorrect, i believe. I understand the crew tried to launch the liferafts, but were unable to do so as they had been secured to prevent theft.

Coaster asked

I wonder how many times a well maintained 30' - 35' motorboat has sunk in UK or French waters and the people on board would not have survived, or did not survive, without a liferaft?

The only reason the crew survived, without the lifrafts, was because they were lucky enough to be very close to shore and the RNLI arrived in time. Mid channel, in Feb, they would have been almost certain to have perished.

 

[Tranona]

The problem with using MAIB is that not all incidents are subject to MAIB investigations.

I remember this one, as i knew the boat http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/4122645.Drama_as_boat_sinks_after_rescue_off_Portland/

It would not have been subject to a MAIB report. Although the report states the liferafts floated free and inflated, this is incorrect, i believe. I understand the crew tried to launch the liferafts, but were unable to do so as they had been secured to prevent theft.

Coaster asked

The only reason the crew survived, without the lifrafts, was because they were lucky enough to be very close to shore and the RNLI arrived in time. Mid channel, in Feb, they would have been almost certain to have perished.

You are right, not all incidents are reported. This would be a good example of why such reports can be unreliable - there is a statement made about liferafts which you say is not true.

As I suggested ther is much that could be learned from such incidents, but unfortunately there is no reliable reporting mechanism.

Think your last sentence re-inforces the point I have been trying to make in relation to the OPs question. How many leisure boaters are out mid-channel in February? Risk Assessment in its literal rather than bureaucratic sense is the key. Safety strategies should reflect the risk of the situation, and an assessment of risk should include understanding the circumstances where a particular piece of equipment is useful, and not just having because "everybody" says you should.

 

[PaulGooch]

You are right, not all incidents are reported. This would be a good example of why such reports can be unreliable - there is a statement made about liferafts which you say is not true.

As I suggested ther is much that could be learned from such incidents, but unfortunately there is no reliable reporting mechanism.

Think your last sentence re-inforces the point I have been trying to make in relation to the OPs question. How many leisure boaters are out mid-channel in February? Risk Assessment in its literal rather than bureaucratic sense is the key. Safety strategies should reflect the risk of the situation, and an assessment of risk should include understanding the circumstances where a particular piece of equipment is useful, and not just having because "everybody" says you should.

Found the MCA report for this, which clarifies the liferaft situation http://www.mcga.gov.uk/c4mca/mcga07...s-releases.htm?id=072BEFED8D564D07&m=2&y=2009

Although all the reports say she was "recently purchased", she had in fact been purchased several months earlier from Wisbech. I can only assume she was still undertaking the "delivery trip" as they'd had problems with weather windows during the trip.

 

[Thepipdoc]

At first site the title of this thread might seem like a silly question but I'll ask it anyway!
(I say its a silly qustion but I think I know the answer even before I ask it!)

I don't currently have a life raft on board my new (to Me) Sealine F33 and and whilst most of our trips are costal, we do intend to make several trips to the channel islands and France in 2011.
The question is should I have a liferaft aboard?

A liferaft it is then!!!

(perhaps the question wasn't that daft after all!!)