Barnacle Bill
Active member
I took the box of flares off the boat last week, because they were well out of date. Asking about disposal, the advice I got at the boatyard (Ireland) was "take them home", so I did, and I was curious. Would they still work? How easy are they to use anyway? I had never fired a flare before.
(I once thought it might be a good idea to demonstrate them to trainee skippers in my RYA school, asked the CG if we could do that, with prior warning that they did not signify distress, and (rather to my surprise) they said "No, Absolutely Not". That put me off flares a bit: if a sailing school isn't even allowed to demonstrate how to fire them, and what they do, to trainee skippers, can they really be regarded as useful and usable signals?)
Well I decided to set off some of the hand flares in the garden (no danger of being mistaken for genuine distress of course, inland and invisible to the outside world). So my sons fired up four hand flares, beside the bonfire patch so they could be dropped if necessary. Every single flare worked perfectly and safely (the sons took pictures and were delighted).
So now I have "disposed of" four of them (dated 2008 by the way) and I thought: well maybe I should keep the other two, if they work perfectly well? I'm no longer under "coding" requirements, so I'm not obliged to carry in-date flares by the MCA or anyone else as far as I'm aware. And frankly I'm a bit pee'd off by being expected to "dispose of" and replace something that evidently still works 100% OK 15 years after its expiry date. (Someone is wasting my money.)
There are still the rocket flares and the smokes ...
(I once thought it might be a good idea to demonstrate them to trainee skippers in my RYA school, asked the CG if we could do that, with prior warning that they did not signify distress, and (rather to my surprise) they said "No, Absolutely Not". That put me off flares a bit: if a sailing school isn't even allowed to demonstrate how to fire them, and what they do, to trainee skippers, can they really be regarded as useful and usable signals?)
Well I decided to set off some of the hand flares in the garden (no danger of being mistaken for genuine distress of course, inland and invisible to the outside world). So my sons fired up four hand flares, beside the bonfire patch so they could be dropped if necessary. Every single flare worked perfectly and safely (the sons took pictures and were delighted).
So now I have "disposed of" four of them (dated 2008 by the way) and I thought: well maybe I should keep the other two, if they work perfectly well? I'm no longer under "coding" requirements, so I'm not obliged to carry in-date flares by the MCA or anyone else as far as I'm aware. And frankly I'm a bit pee'd off by being expected to "dispose of" and replace something that evidently still works 100% OK 15 years after its expiry date. (Someone is wasting my money.)
There are still the rocket flares and the smokes ...
