Is this a realistic survival technique?

[AndrewB]

From the current issue of YM:

"Fewer people would have died in the 1979 Fastnet race if they had inflated their liferaft inside the yacht to prevent it sinking, rather than abandning the vessel to a liferaft that subsequently capsized".

Can this be for real - would you do it? How much positive buoyancy will a liferaft provide?

 

[Mr Cassandra]

Hi i have a 12man/person liferaft and have often thought about deploying in the saloon .Trouble is geting to the fridge to get G=T for the rescue team.It would be chullish not to offer,after all their effort. cheers bob t

Bob T

 

[Guest]

Post deleted by danfoley

 

[Mr Cassandra]

Well i be . Did not think this forum could teach me anything and there you go!!!
cheers bob t

Bob T

 

[AndrewB]

LMAO - trouble is ...

... my panic bag's INSIDE the life-raft.

 

[Mr Cassandra]

Andrew. please disregard the flippant remarks i think that its a go Idea and have considered it as an option. May by safe max loading details would help to work out
cheers bob t

Bob T

 

[pugwash]

Why not an airbag ?

I agree with those who say a liferaft should be used in the way it's intended but the whole concept isn't bad. Why not a large version of a car airbag mounted inside the cabin roof. Pull a tab and Whoosh! Moeover, the size and type of bag would be designed for the boat. The boat would stay awash but on the surface and you could live in the cockpit. Even wriggle around the edges of the airbag to get stuff.

Or if the cannister contained compressed helium instead of air, the boat would lift out of the water and fly home.

 

[Bergman]

I think yes

Seem to recall a case where a motor boat did exactly this and not only survived but managed to salvage the boat too.

Dont know the answer about bouyancy but not too hard to do the sums - a bit of pre-planning to avoid sharp pointy things -should be ok.

Don't intend trying it personaly you understand.

 

[peterk]

good one Andrew!

hi everybody,

I considered this seriously years ago.
I don't carry a life raft,
but an unsinkable hard dinghy,
plus an Avon rowing 'Red-something' inflatable.
That one was to be inflated inside the cabin.
Tight fit(!) but no sharp edges
- unless you get rolled and
interesting things might fly around
(as happened to me in 2000)

instead,
since I singlehanded
I did some calculations
and
I filled all unused space with styrofoam.

a point to ponder:
IF you are awash in any kind of seas,
since water does not compress
you have to expect heavy buffeting.
I thought about the structural stresses
from all that air pushing the cabin top UP
- or better: the weight of the boat hanging by
the cabintop/deck/hull connection.

...peter, www.juprowa.com/kittel

 

[spark]

Yachtsaver

I have been pondering on this for some time. It seems much more viable to keep the boat afloat than let it sink and trust to and inflated rubber ring. There was a product on the market called 'Yachtsaver' which seems to have comprised of auto or self-inflating bags mounted inside the hull. However, there appears to have been some problem with it, technical or commercial, as it is no longer available. Does anyone know what the problem was?

 

[Jeremy_W]

It may not work for yachts with heavy lead keels though. Harry Cudmore tried this trick when one of the Indulgences (I think it was Indulgence V, the 1985 Andrieu One Tonner) had hit a wreck. Harry grabbed the liferaft, took it below and pulled the string. The yacht still sank and the crew took to the water in the lifejackets muttering rudely "to be sure, did you hear the one about the Irishman who inflated the liferaft inside the sinking ship".

 

[spark]

Aye, the sums are important (a wooden hull helps).

 

[FlyingSpud]

I was always told that, except in a case of fire, you step up into a lift raft i.e. You only deploy it as the boat is sinking. If the boat is going down, I don’t think I would experiment by boxing myself in the cabin. If it isn’t, I’d sit tight.

 

[Grehan]

Sums

Some food for thought, here.

So what exactly are the sums, and where does one go to find the formulae, variables, data etc?

Airbags are one thing. (it seems to me)
Styrofoam (!!!!) is another. Is this truly viable?


PS
Please bear in mind I only just scraped through my Physics A-Level, about 35yrs ago!

 

[Mr Cassandra]

Spud . I don`t think anyone saying inflate the liferaft in the saloon then climb in to it . Yachties with panache ,would deploy in saloon and wait in cockpit with G+T imho.
cheers bob t

Bob T

 

[Guest]

No - at least not on mine - I would need 5 m3 (175 cuft) of air to have a chance.

a better use for it would be on the coachroof if you got rolled. If it was well secured, and was set off by being submerged (manual ripcord inside the boat?), it could pop the boat up like the old lifeboat jobs. Now I think about, a good reason for strapping the dinghy to the roof...

 

[peterk]

Re: Sums and McGregor

hi Grehan,
McGregor used stryrofoam blocks
as a customer option to achieve positve flotation
in ALL their
designs all the way up to their McGregor 65!

Personally I'd have preferred two part foam,
but couldn't find anybody with the machine to do it.

2-part foam will float 37 lbs per cubic foot(if I remember right)
styrofoam is lighter, poss 40 lbs per "

The drag about styrofoam :
it releases toxic
fumes when it burns -
but so does almost any plastic.

I laid plywood over the st.f.
and glassed over that lightly
so as to make it removable

...peter, www.juprowa.com/kittel

 

[tcm]

Re: no - but maybe....

I can't believe this? Filling an inflatable and inflated dinghy full of water (a really big one) and althogh it won't sink, it won't lift much in terms of several tons of cruiser/racer.

 

[FlyingSpud]

rtboss
The idea was to inflate the liferaft inside the boat in fastnet 79 type conditions. IMHO, if you were going to sit outside in such a condition, you spill your G & T then if your life life held ,they may find your body on the end of it when they finally found the boat.
Better to be down in the cabin, praying the washboards held and wondering about righting angles. The idea of being in, say, an inverted boat cabin with an inflated life raft (probabaly blocking the way out), well...........

 

[Gunfleet]

Re: Sums and McGregor

So Peter my little 4 ton(weight, not Thames Tonnage) 26 ft boat will need 242 cubic feet of foam. Where am I going to go? I'd have to spend the voyage on deck!