AntarcticPilot
Well-known member
You really need to look at the accounts of actual deployments then you may realise how unsuitable an inflated dinghy is as a life support system. Almost all liferaft deployments are in adverse conditions where a dinghy would be useless. There are examples of dinghies being used, Robertsons and Baileys being the best known. However in both cases the boats sank slowly after collisions with whales so there was plenty of time for preparations and in both cases the dinghy was a complement to the liferaft, not a substitute.
Neither of these cases has much connection with what happens in our coastal waters. Ocean sailing is very different and requires different thinking about survival in the event of foundering. Even then when you look at accounts it is clear that no two events are the same and success in survival depends on the crew making the best use of what they have - plus a big slice of luck. Unfortunately we rarely find out about the failures.
The Robertsons survived DESPITE the failure of their liferaft; the seams failed fairly quickly and they ended up depending on their dinghy, which they enhanced by cannibalizing some of the tubes of the liferaft. Dougal Robertson later advocated the use of navigable survival vessels and deprecated the use of unnavigable liferafts - however, that was before modern GMDSS systems such as EPIRBs and DSC. But of course, there are cases on record where EPIRBs did not function for one reason or another - Cheeki Rafiki recently (though the crews' PLBs did function).
The seams of liferafts do seem to be a weak point; there was a report on these forums a year or two back of a liferaft failing when deployed off Spitzbergen becaise the seams failed.