Did not a Hanse 37 lose its rudder due to some machining to the shaft for an autopilot causing the shaft to snap. This caused the boat to sink. I believe that happened somewhere in that area. Not sure if the rescue services got there in time.
To be honest most of the sailing I do now is very much local coastal, but the life raft is on board more to keep SWMBO happy, more than a safety equipment choice.
The MV Louisa was lost at anchor off Mingulay in 2016 because of a failure of a seawater plumbing system. Three lives lost. The liferaft, fully serviced and in date, failed to inflate. The servicing centre had mixed up the tare and filled weights on the cylinder.
.....and the CG failed to respond to the EPIRB for 43 minutes. We await the MAIB report on a similar local case.
Actually Irish - the boat was also Irish owned. On its way back from a transatlantic trip. Freak event and never really explained. the location was irrelevant except that there was another vessel in sight which rescued them and the overall rescue process was exemplary.
When I carried out a review of the reported incidents of yachts foundering in UK and Irish waters or UK registered boats from late 90s to about 2013, largely drawn from MAIB reports, failure of rafts to deploy was common, as was difficulties in actually deploying the raft and boarding. Poor servicing was the reason in at least 3 cases I remember. I posted my findings here, but I have not followed it up partly because there have been so few reported incidents since then and the lessons from that period are still valid. Many of the operational issues have been addressed with improvements in design and construction of rafts, particularly righting and easier boarding.
Probably a long time. Most yachts seem to survive the attentions of the orcas, but I did se a report recently of one boat sinking and crew taking to the liferaft.
There's have now been two vessels sunk by orcas. The first was a Sadler (32 I think) and the second possibly a Beneteau Oceanis, but I'm not 100% on that one.
We have a canister life raft mounted in a cradle on the stern of our Bav 30. I don’t know how or if it affects performance as it is always there and I don’t have anything to compare it to. The only time that it is intrusive is when we moor stern to and I want to step off onto the port side finger pontoon instead of the main pontoon. Not really a problem, and it doesn’t get in the way of other safety gear on the rails, or in the way when I’m fishing.
I think that was Megawatt.