Shetland - no life raft, no EPIRB/PLBs, no survival suits - would you?

Not boasting or perhaps I am.
2002 - 19ft? Waarship - Trip Tayport, Dundee to Tayport, Dundee - Cally Canal & Crinan and Forth & Clyde = NO charts, VHF, or Echo sounder
KWOTL = Keep Well Out and Turning Left.

2009 - 22ft Maxi - No Echo sounder - 6 months west coast - only aground once in Loch Ness at midnight (yup) and a couple of wee times.

2014 18' - No echo sounder - but have a fire extinguisher dated 1847 or such.

I knew a girl who drowned getting on to a ship in the Manchester Ship Canal
and a shipmate who drowned trying to save another seaman who had been thrown overboard in an Aussie river.

"THEY" will get you if its your turn.
 
pmagowan said:
Essentially you are saying that anyone adventurous is gung-ho and negligent.
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Not at all. People who profess to wanting to go adventurous cruising occupy a long spectrum that stretches between reckless at one end and stiflingly over cautious at the other.
Somewhere in the middle are people who manage to strike a workable balance between all the often conflicting aspects of getting and equipping a boat. (As with the OP).

After a lifetime of furnishing boats for high latitude 'explorers' and round the world races, I have observed that an early obsession with watertight bulkheads and built-in floatation is often an indicator that the boat won't go anywhere. The owners will still be obsessing over the latest 'safety idea' until they eventually die of natural caused still tied to the dock. I can't remember ever hearing about a long distance cruising boat being 'saved' by having a forward waterproof bulkhead closed off with a waterproof door. I certainly haven't built one into a cruising boat for 20 years - like a lot of things they seemed to enjoy a little bit of popularity for a while (about the time the Army ordered their Victorias), but then most people realised they were an expensive, ineffectual waste of space.

As for built in buoyancy - well most cruising boats are short of storage space. The idea of giving over enough volume to keep a swamped 40ft boat high enough in the water to be habitable is totally impracticable for most people who also want to carry food and water (a much better idea IMHO).
 
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TimBennet said:
Not at all. People who profess to wanting to go adventurous cruising occupy a long spectrum that stretches between reckless at one end and stiflingly over cautious at the other.
Somewhere in the middle are people who manage to strike a workable balance between all the often conflicting aspects of getting and equipping a boat. (As with the OP).

After a lifetime of furnishing boats for high latitude 'explorers' and round the world races, I have observed that an early obsession with watertight bulkheads and built-in floatation is often an indicator that the boat won't go anywhere. The owners will still be obsessing over the latest 'safety idea' until they eventually die of natural caused still tied to the dock. I can't remember ever hearing about a long distance cruising boat being 'saved' by having a forward waterproof bulkhead closed off with a waterproof door. I certainly haven't built one into a cruising boat for 20 years - like a lot of things they seemed to enjoy a little bit of popularity for a while (about the time the Army ordered their Victorias), but then most people realised they were an expensive, ineffectual waste of space.

As for built in buoyancy - well most cruising boats are short of storage space. The idea of giving over enough volume to keep a swamped 40ft boat high enough in the water to be habitable is totally impracticable for most people who also want to carry food and water (a much better idea IMHO).
Click to expand...

this is a most excellent reply
 
TimBennet said:
Not at all. People who profess to wanting to go adventurous cruising occupy a long spectrum that stretches between reckless at one end and stiflingly over cautious at the other.
Somewhere in the middle are people who manage to strike a workable balance between all the often conflicting aspects of getting and equipping a boat. (As with the OP).

After a lifetime of furnishing boats for high latitude 'explorers' and round the world races, I have observed that an early obsession with watertight bulkheads and built-in floatation is often an indicator that the boat won't go anywhere. The owners will still be obsessing over the latest 'safety idea' until they eventually die of natural caused still tied to the dock. I can't remember ever hearing about a long distance cruising boat being 'saved' by having a forward waterproof bulkhead closed off with a waterproof door. I certainly haven't built one into a cruising boat for 20 years - like a lot of things they seemed to enjoy a little bit of popularity for a while (about the time the Army ordered their Victorias), but then most people realised they were an expensive, ineffectual waste of space.

As for built in buoyancy - well most cruising boats are short of storage space. The idea of giving over enough volume to keep a swamped 40ft boat high enough in the water to be habitable is totally impracticable for most people who also want to carry food and water (a much better idea IMHO).
Click to expand...


The fact that you have never heard of a long distance cruiser being saved by such things is meaningless. Essentially any long distance cruiser which has sunk WOULD (or at least could) have been saved if it had such things. Very few people were saved by seat belts before they started installing them. I think the point that you make is that you, and most others, do not install them. Like a lifejacket it is useless if not worn. Also I don't see what the waste of space is. A watertight bulkhead is hardly significantly more space occupying than an ordinary one and there is no reason why sealable compartments can not be used for storage. Essentially what you are saying is that people have other priorities in which they spend their money, such as in mast reefing, teak trim etc etc. I would see a watertight bulkhead as simply a smart way of designing and constructing a boat. It takes very little extra effort in both the design stage and in construction, depending on how good a spec you are aiming for, especially if it is providing structural support which allows for a reduction in scantlings elsewhere. Of course it will add some cost if it is being built commercially, what doesn't.

I understand that for the AWB that doesn't venture more than 2 miles offshore the importance of such things is minimal. However, for the blue water cruiser with a plan to visit Greenland and the Northwest passage they seem like very reasonable and basic precautions.
 
With the number of shipping containers floating about, a forward watertight bulkhead seems an excellent idea offshore..
 
dylanwinter said:
Before setting off, and if I had the disposable income, I would certainly have invested more in safety gear - spending maybe another £5 K on equipment.
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I went to North Rona this summer in the Outer Hebrides on my own, with no liferaft, EPIRB or survival suit. What's more I went in an outboard powered folding trimaran, a boat expertly described by Seajet as unseaworthy even for a duck pond. I cooked some scoff on the way using my cooker with built in gas canister which should have blasted my organs across the 7 seas in a michty explosion many times now. I came back. I'm still here. No disasters.
 
dylanwinter said:
driving to the marina has always been much more dangerous than anything a incompetent old man devise once he arrives at the boat
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A 40' Irish boat hit something off Pwllheli a couple of years ago. Claimed to be something floating, but rumour is that it hit a St Tudwal island, which are less buoyant. The small crash space behind the bow saved the boat, as it is designed to do. Without it the boat would have sunk within a minute such was the size of the hole.
 
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pmagowan said:
The fact that you have never heard of a long distance cruiser being saved by such things is meaningless.
Click to expand...

You talk as if the idea of making the main bulkhead watertight is somehow a new and as yet untried concept. It isn't. Twenty five or thirty years ago when 'high latitude' or adventure sailing (call it what you will) was gaining momentum, making the front bulkhead watertight appeared to be one of those 'no-brainers'. After all, ice class ships, navy vessels and such like all had them, so 'obviously' it was the thing to do. As you say; "for the blue water cruiser with a plan to visit Greenland and the Northwest passage they seem like very reasonable and basic precautions".

However your other assertion that "It takes very little extra effort in both the design stage and in construction" proved to be very wide of the mark. There were some incidents amongst the Open class boats or Whitbread boats where these early implementations were found to be woefully inadequate to achieve anything like the imagined effectiveness. Further analysis , especially of the behaviour of part flooded small yachts in big waves showed the loads imposed on these 'water tight' bulkheads to be enormous and the engineering of effective structures both expensive and complex.

But this wasn't the reason they fell from favour. The real reason was that as more people gained experience of cruising in high latitudes, it became increasingly obvious that these watertight bulkheads were a solution looking for a problem. Yachts are not 'ice class ships' in either their capabilities or the way they are handled. Your analogy that they are comparable to seat belts in cars is inaccurate. They are more akin to having the drivers and passengers wear lifejackets in cars: it's conceivable that there may be situations where they might save a life of someone driving into a river or off the quayside, but are they worth it? Even for people who drive near the water regularly?

Any safety 'designed' into a boat should mitigate the 'risks' it will face in some hierarchical order. There is a litany of significant risks that could be addressed at the design long before a watertight bulkhead will show any benefit. Trips, falls, head injuries from the boom, rigging failure, badly stowed objects flying around the cabin . . etc, etc. And in the boat structure itself, some foam filled compartments at and about the waterline at the bow have proved to be both effective and easily implemented. Then at the aft end, research by the ISAF shows that hull structure damaged caused by issues with the rudder and drive gear to also be significant. Aft watertight bulkheads with access similar to lazarette openings are again well proven.

As for watertight compartments used to store things - well, all I can say is go look at a RNLI lifeboat and see what it takes to make a storage compartment truly watertight. Then imagine having to turn six heavy dog latches and swing a large metal door open, every time you want to get to the tea bags.
 
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GrahamM376 said:
What has traveling further got to do with anything? If the water is too deep to wade or swim ashore before hypothermia sets in which can be quicker than many realise, your last though will no doubt be "wish I'd bought that raft".
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so what journey is too short to not need a life raft?

should every yacht, no matter how small, have a life raft?

D
 
I carry a rope-cutting knife, wear a LJ when underway, clip-on when going forward (in arousing weather or when single-handed), and have an in-date liferaft.

I'm not very adventurous really and only really sail the South Coast and the Channel, and sometimes over to France (where the LR is compulsory), but the bottom line is that none of this safety/emergency equipment will make up for complacency or an un-seamanlike attitude at sea.

Being thick-skinned with an encapsulated long keel and a coastal sailor who'll only set off with a forecast suitable for the passage, a storm won't sink my boat, neither will hitting a container at 5kts, and fire is pretty unlikely really - but if something catastrophic did happen, it would be a right p1sser if the only option was "or death"!
 
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