Is it still worth carrying flares?

[ShinyShoe]

Yes, there may be a vessel just out of sight who will come to your aid in a matter of minutes seeing a flare, where they may not receive a radio broadcast.

Once when I had to use a flare a dive rib spotted it and was with us in minutes, it also highlighted who was the boat in trouble, as we were somewhere with a number of boats around at the time.

But at the same time a touch tricky...

What does a Coastal Pack have in it? 2 Para 2 Hand 2 Smoke?

If you can't see the boat I guess smoke is a bit of long shot. So likely is the Handheld. While VHF line of sight is often quoted - it does go a tad beyond that. So you have 2 para's... 1min 20 of burn time. Do you use them both close together in time soon after your incident to attract the attention of a hopefully unseen boat, or wait till you feel there is more chance of being seen...

 

[oldmanofthehills]

Its not either or. If in serious trouble I'd go for DSC radio as first option. If that works but rescue craft/helicopter seems unable to locate me I would use smoke or flare. If no response to radio or radio inoperative I'd use flares etc,etc

I hope I'm never in that position but flares on board do me no harm and sadly £28 or even £48 is nothing to my other costs in boating.

As an aside I note that my full length emergency aerial gives such good reception compared with my 1/4 wave at mast head, that I now hear French traffic so perhaps my transmit range might be better also, but short of calling UK CG from near French coast I don't know how to test it.

 

[Mark-1]

Its not either or.

To a degree it is. If you have mobile+epirb+vhf+handheld vhf you might be down to a choice between plb/flares/second vhf as comms option number 4. (An example, substitute your own priority order) I suspect a lot of people carrying flares *are* doing so at the the expense of something more useful. Then there's the time, the last time I had flares to get rid of it cost me a solid half a day. I could have spent that time reading up on survivial training (Again, an example, substitute your own alternative).

Like everything, Flares come with an opportunity cost, so there is an element of either/or.

flares on board do me no harm.

They might if you used them. They don't use gauntlets and a sandbucket at flare demos for a laugh.


I've no idea why I'm staying in this pointless debate. We all know the limitations of flares. We're essentially vehemently arguing semantics about whether flares are slightly useful or whether they're faintly useful.