Flares

[Twister_Ken]

"I would say that a high powered torch / light has it’s place in a yachts inventory as they could prove useful in some situations e.g. search for a man overboard at night etc."

Yes, but so would a white parachute, and a parachute is also likely to alert others to the fact that something is wrong.

A high powered torch has a beam width of what? 5 degrees maybe. You've only got to miss the MOB by a yard with the beam to drown the poor beggar. Whereas a paraflare has a beam width of 360 degrees and is very bright. Why not have both?

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Edit

As a supplementary, is it official advice anywhere (MCGA, USCG, RNLI) that a torch be used as a principle or even secondary means of communicating distress? If you are in the water, what odds on successfully flashing •••---••• and having it seen and understood.

Supplementary 2. If a red flare is reported at sea, it will immediately become a rescue shout. As others have said here, if an EPIRB is triggered, it will be 30 minutes minimum before help is despatched.

 

[flaming]

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I had missed that. I don't recall the exact date, a saturday in October or November if that's any help.

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So you were involved in an event you think saved someone's life and can't remeber the weekend? I'll draw my own conclusions.


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My bad, I also don't recall the exact date of the RTI that I witnessed and appeared in court as a witness for.
My point was that I saw a flare and reacted by phoning the coastgauard, and then had to hold as 9 other people had also called. Fire a flare in coastal waters and it will get seen and reported.
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EPIRBS are still very expensive, and rely on external systems to function, with no way of the opperator to know if they are actually working.

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Cheaper than a RORC pack. Also they have a test button. Flares have no test button. Once you let them off you don't know if they 'worked' - ie did someone see and report an accurate position - with a handheld (or even a mobile which are used often for Maydays) you get a response.


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The test button does not transmit. So when it's activated you still have no way of knowing if it's working. And its signal has to go to land and get relayed out to the people in your vacinity (who of course you're trusting to take down the lat/long from the coastguard and realise that they're close to you).

Make no mistake, I'm not dismissing EPIRBs at all, I think they're fantastic bits of kit, but they are there to suppliment other safety devices, not replace. Why would you not want as many types of safety devices as possible!


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I can't be arsed to reply to your other stuff since you're not comparing like-with like which makes me questoin if you're really thinking this through.

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In what way was I not comparing like for like? I listed all the ways in which lights are inferior to flares as emergency devices. Are you advocating replacing flares with something else?!

 

[Judders]

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Why would you not want as many types of safety devices as possible!


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Andn that is the long and short of it. Nobody is arguing that flares are the be all and end all, but for the very minor risk of the flares sitting in the propper container, it seems to stand to reason to have them there. One hopes never to use them, indeed one hopes never to use any of the emergancy kit on the boat, but after you've realised the radio isn't working, the batteries in the hand held have leaked, the torch is in four pieces on the cabin sole and SWMBO's bloomers run up the mast hasn't attracted anybody's attention, you might turn to the flares. Rather that than give in to fate.

But that said, for the sailing I do, I don't think I'll be replacing the RORC pack, but simply sticking to the inshore pack, supplemented my some smoke-sticks.

 

[Sans Bateau]

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but after you've realised the radio isn't working, the batteries in the hand held have leaked, the torch is in four pieces on the cabin sole

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I do hope in reality you do look after your equipment better than that, if you dont, you may well need the flares!

 

[Judders]

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but after you've realised the radio isn't working, the batteries in the hand held have leaked, the torch is in four pieces on the cabin sole

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I do hope in reality you do look after your equipment better than that, if you dont, you may well need the flares!

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Well, er, now you mention it...

 

[BlueSkyNick]

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I'll admit to 'sitting on the fence' when it comes to flares.

[/ QUOTE ]Is that the same as sitting under a tree to avoid seasickness? /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[mandlmaunder]

When recently boarded by Dutch St Marten coast guards I wasn't asked for my mobile phone or hand held VHF or torches of any power supply or candle power, what they wanted to see was my flare pack and to check it's expiry date.
We carry every form of distress signaling device we can think of.
Modern flares come in many forms one of which is the pistol version , much safer for use without gloves or saftey glasses.

 

[BlueSkyNick]

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the white hand held that crippled the YM instructor a few years ago was a serviceable in date flare

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p.s. Does anyone know how the instructor is getting on, is he getting his life back together yet??

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Looks like he's doing OK here http://www.duncanwells.com/

His blog used to go back to the horrid days of going in and out of hospital, but that seems to have dropped out of the archives, or I havent looked hard enough.

EDIT: an extract from his Homepage
To look at Duncan you would never know but in April 2006 he was shot by a faulty collision warning flare while demonstrating its deployment for a film on Navigation and Safety. Duncan spent 9 months in hospital, 4 months in ITU, the first 6 weeks of which he was in a coma. He had 20 laperotomies, 5 Plastics operations, 1 tracheostomy and 1 skin graft. He lost his spleen, all bar 7 inches of large bowel, some of his small bowel and a section of pancreas. And he gained a stoma. The head of ITU said later "I think it is virtually unprecedented. Certainly in my 25 years in clinical intensive care practice I've never seen anybody survive the magnitude of both the initial injury and all the following complications." But survive he did.

And he went on to raise over £50,000 for a ventilator fund for Wexham Park Hospital. It was his wife Sally's idea to buy the hospital a ventilator as a way of saying 'thank you'. Tremendous support was received from friends and work colleagues throughout the world.

Moral of story: Use of flares can cause life threatening illnesses, even when used properly .... but it won't stop me carrying them for use in emergency.

 

[flaming]

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Modern flares come in many forms one of which is the pistol version , much safer for use without gloves or saftey glasses.

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And illegal in the UK if I recall.

 

[bbg]

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to prove the case for flares you simply have to do two things. Demonstrate that they're as risk free as electric light. Secondly demonstrate that they're more effective than the alternatives.

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Normally the onus would be on the person who wants to change the status quo. So it should be you who has to prove the case.

Using your criteria, you would have to prove that electric lights are no riskier than flares. I'll accept that lights are less risky.

Next, you'd have to prove that the electric light is more effective than (or as effective as) flares. And this is where I don't think you could prove your case. Certainly in some circumstances the electric light could be as effective, but it doesn't do everything a flare pack can do. Things a flare pack can do that a light can't:
- be unambiguous. There are a lot of lights out there. Seeing an intermittent white light can be difficult against a bright background, and does not clearly indicate distress even when seen. Flares are unambiguous distress signals.
- provide over the horizon visibility. Parachute flares can be seen for miles - it is the reason they go so high. Electric light is purely line of sight.
- provide 360 degree visibility. Electric light is directional.
- provide daytime visibility (esp. smoke).

Don't pretend a high powered electric light can replace all the functions of flares, because it can't.

No one is suggesting that flares do the job of EPIRB or VHF. They do different jobs, and obviously the advanced technological safety equipment diminishes the need to rely on flares as a primary (or even a secondary) means of summoning help. And I do recognize that modern equipment can do all of the things listed above, except provide 360 degree or daytime visibility.

And that is, I think, what this post has led me to - visibility. Flares work on the sense that is the primary sense for anyone who is not blind. Flares have their faults, but they can be SEEN. I cannot imagine any rescue taking place entirely based on electronics. At some point, someone has to see the casualty and go and rescue them. Flares can be a primary means of being seen, or just the final piece in the puzzle (red hand held or smoke for location). But they do have a place.

 

[KINGFISHER 9]

Surely, where safety to yourself and your crew is concerned, you take everything that's available to you ..... don't you?

There aren't half some tossers who post on these forums! .. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[nct1]

Some may remember I was flamed for advocating that a liferaft was a necessary piece of kit, so it is interesting being on the other side of the argument in this case.

Some people feel more comfortable with flares, and that is not to say that I would question their reasons for doing so. The disposal issue, has tipped the balance for me.

So now it seems the disadvantages of flares out weigh the advantages.

They are susceptaible to damp (in a Marine environment !)
They cannot be regularly tested
They cannot be easily disposed of
They are unpredictable
They are a firework which we are normally told to stay x paces away from.
They are a last roll of the dice if ALL your other systems fail.

On the plus side, they may wake up sleepy ship's crews if you are doing an ocean crossing assuming your radios were out of commission, (though years of reading sailing disaster accounts indicates this is not guarenteed).

If you have a DSC radio, hand held radio, (mobile phone if onshore and who does not), powerful torch (or 2), fog horn and possibly some emergency landing dye (where would you get that ?) and EPRIB you can overcome this.

I guess if I was doing an ocean passage I could justify flares but for costal, I cannot.

 

[Twister_Ken]

"And illegal in the UK if I recall."

Strictly (I think) not illegal, but requiring a firearms certificate, to be kept in a locked cabinet, etc.

 

[Judders]

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I guess if I was doing an ocean passage I could justify flares but for costal, I cannot.

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Surely a flare is more use three miles off shore where someone might see it than in the middle of the atlantic.

 

[flaming]

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"And illegal in the UK if I recall."

Strictly (I think) not illegal, but requiring a firearms certificate, to be kept in a locked cabinet, etc.

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I thought they were classed as handguns?

Off for a google....

 

[Sans Bateau]

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Surely, where safety to yourself and your crew is concerned, you take everything that's available to you ..... don't you?

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Barrels of burning tar is available as a distress signal, do you carry a barrel of tar?

 

[gavin_lacey]

If you end up in the North sea at this time of year the 30 minute aquisition time for Epirb is problematic. If more than 1 mile from shore a light is a complete waste of time. VHF and flares give a chance. I would rather have both - 2 chances. The levels of equipment specfied for coded boats have been derived from years of experience. They form a good basis for good practice on leisure yachts.
Incidentally since they are recommended by MCA etc how do you think a skipper would fare in the event of a fatality if he claimed that he did not carry flares for the reasons that have been used in todays posts.

 

[EdWingfield]

They've been used as 'handguns'. The mate of an anchored coaster 'flipped' and began firing flares at any crew who showed their faces up in the fo'c'sle.

They also are misused as are radios. I diverted for some miles to go to a flare launch. Only to find that it was party time, in the middle of Start Bay!

 

[nct1]

My mobile, DSC radio, hand held radio or EPRIB would more use in this situation.

 

[gavin_lacey]

Some of the view being expressed on this forum make a mockery of RYA arguments that there is no need for legislation. Yachtsmen are very clearly using spurious arguments to reduce the cost of boating and are thus putting themselves and their crews at increased risk. I am starting to see why most countries make it a legal requirement to carry safety equipment appropriate to the boat and voyage.