Life Rafts

[Two_Hapence]

Hi,

I read the PBO project about turning a tender into a liferaft and my initial impression was - great idea. Thinking about it a bit more I began to wonder about all the downsides of carrying such a lifeboat on a cruising yacht. Other than the weight factor there are some serious objections to such an outfit.

1. Where do you stow the thing? With the canopy on and the fenders laced in place it takes up a lot of room.
2. Once you have stowed it on board (on the foredeck) it interferes with the safe and seamanlike running of the boat. It will catch sheets, get in the way of foredeck operations and generally cause havoc to all operations forrard.
3. The extra windage must make manouveres in close quarters exciting.
4. Deploying it will be hard work, especially in testing conditions as it is heavy, unwieldy and will catch on all sorts of running/standing rigging.
5. Once you get the thing in the water it is going to be difficult to get into from the water, especially as it is quite likely to take off downwind at a huge rate of knots in even quite moderate conditions.
6. If you are lucky enough to be anywhere near it when it is launched but unlucky enough to be in the water it becomes a huge club ready to thump you as soon as you get anywhere near the stern and there seems to be no option of climbing in from anywhere along the comparitively safe beam of the craft.

All in all I came to the conclusion that the boat looks like a fun and stable tender but as a liferaft it is more likely to lead to an accident at sea than to prevent one. If your have strong crew and the yacht goes down (slowly) in ideal conditions then the idea is excellent. I'd hate to try and launch and enter the thing in anything above a force 4 and never from the water and I'd resent every inch it took up on the foredeck.

Have I missed the point or is this thing a liability to avoid like the plague and we'd be better off spending the money on buoyancy for the mothership? Is it a seamanlike project or a suburban yachties winter project?

Regards


Ian Robertson

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Peppermint]

Re: The old quandry

Do you trust your life to something in a box that might work in an emergency or something you use everyday but might be worn by the extra work. I'd have thought the regular inspection of something you use a lot is no great problem.

I guess it depends on what sort of sailing you do and where you do it. Also what size your boat is. Mines a 25ft sailing boat and if a thing has two jobs it's twice as welcome onboard.

I think these rigid dinghy conversions are nonsense. As you point out access and stability during access from the water offer plenty of challenges as does not getting clubbed by the hull. If you subscribe to the "always step up into the liferaft" idea that becomes a major factor.

Other areas to look at would be improving your yachts hull with collision bulkheads or buoyancy or if your small boating in homewaters survival suites and a good EPIRB.

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Jacket]

Re: The old quandry

I think rigid dinghy life raft conversions do have their place, but only if you have a conventional liferaft as well. I've spoken to one bluewater cruiser, who had converted his dinghy to a liferaft. The canopy, sailing rig and everything was stowed inside the dinghy, which was kept upside-down on deck.

If he had to abandon, his plan was to laungh the inflatable liferaft first. Then, if he had time, he'd get his hard dinghy over the side and tie it to the liferaft, then abandon ship into the liferaft. Later, once the storm or whatever had pased, he'd have time to rig the dinghies canopy and sailing rig, and would then have the choice of staying in the liferaft, abandoning the liferaft and using the dinghy to sail to safety, or to sail the dinghy, towing the liferaft behind, so that should the weather get worse again, he'd still have it.

<hr width=100% size=1>