Do people bother with liferafts for coastal & cross Channel?

Champagne Murphy said:
I once asked Mrs Graham about Seago. The response was 'Chinese rubber?!!' Need I say more?
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She is not "into" Chinese Rubber.
i bought one on the spur of the moment fron the ybw for sale @ £200 bargain i thought, HOW MUCH to service. At the time a new 4 man was £450. i kept it for 6 months & ebayed it. made £150 profit that went towards a fine Zodiac from another forumite
 
Well there's one thing going for an inflatable dinghy, rather than a raft if going cross-Channel; at least one can row, motor or even sail it !

The only time I've felt like taking to the dinghy was in a serious electrical storm in mid Channel with lightning hitting the water around us and a ship nearby, crew and I had a very brief chat " it's a matter of time isn't it ?! " and inflated the dinghy.

Needless to say we didn't get struck by lightning and the dinghy was a right pain to tow.

I do think a high speed inflator and a battery of the ' car booster ' type is an idea, and I have wondered if in emergency one could use fire extinguishers to inflate the dinghy ?

I have never got an answer to this bright idea.
 
Seajet said:
I have wondered if in emergency one could use fire extinguishers to inflate the dinghy ?
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It's an interesting idea. Obviously there's no point filling the tubes with water or powder; it would have to be a CO2 extinguisher. It would probably also have to be a fairly large one, though I don't know what pressure extinguishers are usually under and hence how much free gas is in them. Finally, there's the question of whether the rapidly expanding gas would freeze the fabric of the dinghy around the valve, and damage it.

Pete
 
The liferaft might take seconds to deploy but it won't necessarily be the right way up.

laika said:
And don't think of this as hijacking the thread but widening the discussion but...

..what is the current deal with french authorities checking liferaft service dates? To answer the OP, yes I do have a liferaft. I don't like having the tender inflated on long passages, and as others have said, wouldn't fancy the dinghy in any kind of nasty conditions. The liferaft (theoretically) takes seconds to deploy: no struggling to get it over the guard rails.
To my additional question...my liferaft is due a service. By the time I get the boat back in the water there's only going to be time for one significant trip before the end of the season. I'd prefer to wait til next year to get the liferaft serviced but have heard anecdotes about french authorities not requiring that you have a liferaft, but if you do have one having the certificate to say it's in date. I prefer the out of date liferaft to none, but would find a friend's garage to stash it in if I'm going to be done for possessing an out of date one in France

Having said that, never even had to show my passport sailing to france so far...
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nortada said:
Statistics don't mean a lot when you are on fire.

In fact, in the survival game, statistics mean nothing when you are the statistic!
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You can imagine all sorts of things that can go wrong, but learning from empirical data helps you avoid the obvious and prepare for the more likely. Fire is rare because people are very aware of the causes and consequences, therefore take steps to prevent it happening. The majority of fires occur when boats are at anchor, ashore or being refuelled, not at sea.
 
Elessar said:
my yachtmaster examiner, who's name escapes me but others must have been examined by him, survived a week in in tinker tramp mid atlantic. Lucky I would say, but you can't say it's not better than nothing. Especially in a MOB situation. The Job James example pertinent.
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You can always find examples that are not typical, as I said in my post - but we are discussing coastal and cross channel sailing where there are detailed reports of founderings, and if you read them as I suggested you find very few where a dinghy would have been useful.

Despite the image of boats sinking rapidly and the crew stepping up into a nicely inflated liferaft, this is not what happens in practice in most cases. There are so few cases of leisure yachts foundering and little commonality except for the underlying causes I mentioned that it is very difficult to predict what might happen. Most emergencies never get that far as our rescue services are so effective that they get resolved before they become disasters - or the crew resolves the problem using its own resources.

Most people are realistic about the value of a liferaft and having one makes them feel better prepared, and a half inflated dinghy fulfils a similar role for some people. However as has been pointed out earlier if you have done the survival course and read the accounts of actual incidents where rafts have been used for real, you would do anything to avoid getting in a position where you had to rely on it!
 
Coaster said:
I would be interested to read about British and Irish waters incidents of this type.

Does anyone know of web links to relevant information?
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The MAIB and the Irish equivalent publish regular reports, both of individual incidents and an annual summary of findings and recommendations, broken down into leisure, fishing and commercial. Not all incidents are fully investigated, but most that resulted in loss of life, where both commercial and leisure craft were involved, or where there were specific lessons to be learned. Covers only UK (or Irish) registered craft and some are outside UK/Irish territorial waters.

Sobering reading.
 
Tranona said:
You can always find examples that are not typical, as I said in my post - but we are discussing coastal and cross channel sailing where there are detailed reports of founderings, and if you read them as I suggested you find very few where a dinghy would have been useful.

Despite the image of boats sinking rapidly and the crew stepping up into a nicely inflated liferaft, this is not what happens in practice in most cases. There are so few cases of leisure yachts foundering and little commonality except for the underlying causes I mentioned that it is very difficult to predict what might happen. Most emergencies never get that far as our rescue services are so effective that they get resolved before they become disasters - or the crew resolves the problem using its own resources.

Most people are realistic about the value of a liferaft and having one makes them feel better prepared, and a half inflated dinghy fulfils a similar role for some people. However as has been pointed out earlier if you have done the survival course and read the accounts of actual incidents where rafts have been used for real, you would do anything to avoid getting in a position where you had to rely on it!
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I agree with you but you missed my point about the dinghy being useful in a MOB situation if you have a high freeboard. That, IMO, is the most likely scenario where my raft would be used.

I just bought a new raft, (zodiac, £1600, 8 man canister, new fangled ramp instead of a string ladder, 3 year service intervals) before that I hired. Take it back every year and they swap for a freshly serviced one (that's tatty and doesn't fit your boat). The chap in the hire shop had worked there for 3 years, and had never had one returned that had been deployed.
 
I would say there's an order to buying these things. If you have nothing, buy a lifejacket. If you only have a lifejacket, buy extinguishers. If you have those, get a PLB. Once everyone on board has a PLB look into life rafts.
As luck would have it this is also the order of expense of the items. I'd say a life raft is pointless unless someone is coming, and a PLB or EPIRB is the way to do that. Mid channel I'd rather be in the water with my LJ knowing help is coming at nearly 30 knots than in a liferaft dry hoping someone is in VHF range and that they have their VHF on, and that they aren't a forumite (most forumites openly say they ignore the beeps and maydays as background noise...).

Mid atlantic I'd want everything on the list and more.
 
lustyd said:
Mid channel I'd rather be in the water with my LJ knowing help is coming at nearly 30 knots than in a liferaft dry hoping someone is in VHF range and that they have their VHF on
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I'm not sure I agree with that.

Even with a lifejacket on, immersed in the English Channel is not somewhere I would want to spend very long. At best, you're looking at about two hours (say an hour for a 25-knot ALB to reach you from Yarmouth or Bembridge, plus an hour total for the signal reaching Falmouth, Coastguard deciding what to do, lifeboat manager contacted, crew paged and reached the station, boat prepared and launched, etc). And you are putting all your eggs in one electronic basket - if that PLB does not function properly, then you're probably dead.

In a liferaft in reasonable conditions, you have time. In the central Channel, you're unlikely to remain out of even handheld range of a yacht, a cargo ship, a ferry, etc for all that long - although it seems empty compared to the Solent, it's really a fairly busy piece of water. Similarly, at night if you can see ships' lights in the shipping lanes then a red parachute has to be worth a shot - any responsible bridge crew should have a good lookout going if they're in the lanes.

Pete
 
Elessar said:
I agree with you but you missed my point about the dinghy being useful in a MOB situation if you have a high freeboard. That, IMO, is the most likely scenario where my raft would be used.

I just bought a new raft, (zodiac, £1600, 8 man canister, new fangled ramp instead of a string ladder, 3 year service intervals) before that I hired. Take it back every year and they swap for a freshly serviced one (that's tatty and doesn't fit your boat). The chap in the hire shop had worked there for 3 years, and had never had one returned that had been deployed.
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At least now it is once every three years. Before you had to have it serviced(in France) every year, which was probably the major reason why so many French re-registered under Belgian flags.
 
Yes. I sailed without one - cross channel and cross the Irish Sea - but then I got less poor and older and more cautious and now I have one.

My observation (from a limited dataset) is that people who feel responsible for small kids seem to be more likely to have a liferaft.

Having read the reports of the '79 Fastnet, and practised using a liferaft in a sea survival course, I think I'd work very hard to avoid ever having to use one.
 
arto said:
Having read the reports of the '79 Fastnet, and practised using a liferaft in a sea survival course, I think I'd work very hard to avoid ever having to use one.
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I am in agreement with the above. Currently I do not have one as I am donking about in the Caribbean with the dinghy fully inflated at all times. I would much rather get into my tough hypalon RIB with a grab bag with includes a couple of space blankets than a liferaft.

I suppose I would have one if I was doing a Transat or Transpac but my plan would be to try and have both in the water and tied together if possible. I suspect I would still prefer to be in the AB dink clutching the EPIRB.
 
arto said:
Having read the reports of the '79 Fastnet, and practised using a liferaft in a sea survival course, I think I'd work very hard to avoid ever having to use one.
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One of the positive things to come out of the '79 Fastnet is that liferaft design was throughly researched and improved upon, meaning those you buy today are significantly better than those of thirty years ago.

That still doesn't mean they're very nice places to be though.
 
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