Liferaft, Canister or Valise

I have recently bought a 6 man valise, weight about 29Kg & this is kept in a locker under the cockpit floor. I can lift it out without undue difficulty in one pull. My wife can do so with a bit of struggle, but we have tried it using the unhooked mainsheet and with this all members of the family can pull it out of the locker relatively quickly & easily, using a hook up link left on the valise.
 
When I eventually get around to buying a life raft I will get a cannister. Harlequin has a flat roof just waiting for something...

S.
 
Re: Experienced yachtsman eh?

Bolted on to the transom does indeed sound safer from being carried away, but I still wouldn't want to pull the string near the stern gear if I could help it.

I suppose what you really need to know in advance of needing to get into the raft, is whether the yacht is rolling from rail to rail or pitching the stern 6 feet up in the air.

If the wind is up and the mast still standing she will probably be fore-reaching with pitching being the greater problem. If the weather is calm, any swell will leave her rolling.

Most liferaft instructions indicate deployment from a fore-deck, and with any wind around you could hope that once the sea anchor and ballast pockets have filled they would help swing the yacht head to wind and calm things down a bit.

But who knows?
 
Re: There\'s another catch....

I'm not sure about hydrostatic releases, not only for the snagging risk, but also - do you leave the painter of the liferaft attached to the vessel as recommended? If so, it'll presumably be dragged down by the vessel. If not, in any kind of wind, assuming the liferaft has made it inflated to the surface, it'll presumably get blown away far faster than you can swim over to it.

Another concern - I would be dubious of trusting the hydrostatic release not to trigger if the yacht rolls through 180 degrees. Perhaps in theory it's set to go off at a greater depth (?), but if it did, you'd have a mess.

I wonder if hydrostatic releases don't introduce more hazards than they solve?
 
Re: There\'s another catch....

Liferafts are specified so that (a) the buoyancy of the uninflated cannister is sufficient to trigger the auto-inflation and (b) so that the buoyancy of the fully inflated raft exceeds the breaking-strain of the painter.

In other words if the boat does go down the hydrostatic release will do it's work.

While they are certainly a last resort (because they only trigger when the boat is a few feet underwater) they must be better than nothing - after all in the nature of things they will probably pop up upwind of the casualities when they do appear.
 
Re: There\'s another catch....

And if the yacht rolls? Liferaft may be several feet under water - are we sure the mechanism won't trigger?
 
Very useful discussion. I have a 4-person valise in a cockpit locker dedicated to its storage (well, 0K, there are a couple of spare warps in there too). The locker opening is only just big enough for it, but I figured that in extremis I could break out the 8mm plywood panel between the locker and the cockpit.

Reading these postings has led me to the conclusion that I should store the wrecking bar and the shroud cutters alongside the life raft.
 
Re: There\'s another catch....

Surely if you capsize the liferaft is still likely to be only a couple of feet under water?

The Hydrostatic releases come in a range of triggering depths (up to 6m or so) so you can choose one that makes you comfortable.

I like these for EPIRBS, but not so sure for liferafts!
 
Re: There\'s another catch....

Simon
See info on release gear here

http://www.landfallnavigation.com/hydrostatic.html

The vessel needs to be at a depth of 4 mtrs before deployment and if the depth of water exceeds the painter length then the red weak link breaks.

As I said in an earlier post it's horses for courses.

Valise - easy to stow out of the way - more difficult to deploy (removing from locker) - can be deployed anywhere on the vessel - but can't be fitted with automatic hydrostatic release/deployment gear.

Canister - problem to stow on a yacht - can risk damage to fittings if hit by large sea - will auto deploy in event of vessel sinking - will only deploy from fixed position - can be manually deployed.

Remember that valise L/R's were designed for use on yachts because of the problems of finding suitable mounting positions and the risk of the vessel rolling/capsizing and getting it caught in the rigging - but under the various commercial regs only canister types are acceptable including hydrostatic release gear.

I still maintain my original position and that is on a yacht I prefer a valise but on a commercial fishing vessel then it's definitely a canister c/w release gear.

Apart from getting unexpectedly run down in a yacht then I would hope to have enough sense to at least get the L/R out before I really needed it.

BTW - when I did my sea survival with P&O (IMSC = if memory serves me correctly) the painter length on their L/R's is 70 mtrs long - I know I seemed to pull for ever before the 2 bottles fired.

Peter.

PS
Bottom line is I don't really care which type is used - what interests me more is that there is a L/R aboard.
 
I would suggest that such a question should not be decided by the use of a vote, which merely turns the debate into a popularity contest?

My (non expert) opinion would be to suggest a valise is simpler and thus better, and a canister to be used only if necessary (due to lack of space, accessibility, etc).
 
And the size of the craft...

I'm talking from the perspective of a 38 footer which has more than enough room to store things on deck without materially affecting the way the craft behaves. I'm not sure that the same would be true of a 25 footer.
 
Re: And the size of the craft...

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I'm talking from the perspective of a 38 footer which has more than enough room to store things on deck without materially affecting the way the craft behaves. I'm not sure that the same would be true of a 25 footer.


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Very true Chris and I suspect a lot of people only see it (quite rightly) from the pesrpective of their own size of boat. We had a valise way back when we had a 30 footer and certainly wouldn't have wanted the weight on the stern. When we moved to a hefty Westerly 33 footer it came with a 4 man valise in one of the (huge) cockpit lockers, it was always buried and a back breaking task to get in and out and SWMBO couldn't do it so we fitted a cannister raft on the pushpit. The pushpit mounted raft was fine on that size of boat and stern and it sat there very happily through several gales including one really bad one when we ran downwind for 12 hours in huge seas with a steady F9. We now have a 41 footer with a swim step/scoop stern, wide but not hugely so and fitted that with a pushpit mounted cradle so that the raft can be launched in seconds without effort by the weakest of crew, plus it can be boarded if needs be from a lower position on the step IF conditions allow. The raft sits inboard of the extreme end of the boat but is to one side and will drop clear given a straight drop or slide/bounce clear otherwise. In this position it is protected from numpty in-harbour attacks and the pushpit is massive in our case as it forms part of the stern gantry with 3" dia poles holding radar and wind genny. We have never had anything like solid water near the pushpit raft mounting, but this past weekend with just a rough East 6/7 mid Channel had lots of green stuff sweeping the deck and coachroof where it might otherwise be mounted and launching it from there would need a fair bit of muscle.

The raft size is another consideration. Our boat in standard trim has 10 berths, ours is modified to just 6 but we only ever sail as 2! I looked very hard at raft sizes and decided a 4 man wasn't big enough for 2 people for any length of time and especially if extra grab bags and gear were taken. I know the idea is not to have too big a raft or it could capsize in heavy seas but modern rafts do have more ballast pockets and I am not convinced that heavy seas would be the most likely reason for taking to a raft. Since I would NEVER take to a raft until the boat sank under us the more likely scenario to cause it I think would be catastrophic flooding like from hitting say a submerged container or being run down by another vessel, or alternatively by fire/explosion on board. In these cases the raft size/stability question doesn't arise. We therefore have a 6 man raft in our pushpit cradle, enough in theory to carry the maximum we now have berths for on board so any liability HSE type questions are also covered if needs ever be.

But as rightly said, all this is horses for courses and needs to be considered in the context of number of people, cruising area, size of boat and not to mention size of wallet!
 
Re: And the size of the craft...

The choice of location may also be influenced by the hull construction, both in material and general strength.

For example, our own boat is steel and the chances of a sudden sinking due to running into a container or whatever is extremely remote and that made us more relaxed about where we keep the raft. Even being run down is unlikely to send us straight to the bottom unless pretty much T boned.

Again, if one has a frp boat built very strongly with very high modulus materials one could also be relaxed, but oppositely if a very lightly built race boat with canting keel one may feel inclined to have the raft by ones side ready to jump in at a moments notice for much of the time /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif.

John
 
Re: And the size of the craft...

[ QUOTE ]
Again, if one has a frp boat built very strongly with very high modulus materials

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Does Kevlar help since ours is laid up with it?

The thought of abandoning our nice solid bit of boat for a kids paddling pool with a cover sends chills down the spine!
 
Before you make your final choice of liferaft try a little experiment.Fill a heavy duty sack with the equivalent weight of the proposed liferaft,Place it on the ground and stand on a rocky chair are you now able to lift the sack to waist level and rotate to pass it over an adjacent line suspended between two other chairs.Well done so you can do it.Now repeat the exercise using your smallest member of crew because they may be the only person available to lauunch the liferaft.As a final test free stand the sack on a chair and see how much effort is require to push it off.QED.Its your life but mine is pushpit mounted ,locked when I am off the boat and insured
 
Re: And the size of the craft...

Will depend on where it is - I think often in the highly stressed areas rather than the collision areas in which case not necessarily of much help.

Also would not fancy getting into one and I prefer to bath in the warm comfort that the likelihood of ever having to do so is statistically a very, very unlikely circumstance off a cruising yacht and not worth fretting over too much.

John
 
Re: And the size of the craft...

Luckily in the days when ours was built (1988) the Kevlar was apparently laid throughout because that way was easier than trying to control it being placed in only some designated areas! Jeanneau still use Kevlar but I'm not sure if it is still throughout or just in selected areas.

Robin
 
Doesn't anyone think it a bit strange that new yots with their CE categorisations and all those pointless (IMHO) regulations, don't have provision to securely store a liferaft?

Old tubs like our Moody31 have a loose seat where you can secure one with a hydrostatic release. It may not be to everyone's liking but at least the builder thought about it...
 
I thought all new yachts had to have a purpose-built liferaft storage slot (often underneath the helmsman's seat) - those I have seen have all been much better suited to the purpose than anything you could retro-fit
 
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