Survival Suits

[yachtorion]

Are quick don survival / immersion suits deadliest catch style a superior life raft alternative for coastal craft?

http://www.thesafetysupplycompany.c...-PW-LJ-.html?gclid=COjvyt6Sy8kCFQb3wgod18ULCQ

• Can't fall out of or capsize it.
• No risk in transferring from boat to raft... you are the raft.
• Can don well before abandonment becomes necessary and still operate
• Allow survival inside a flooded but floating boat.
• 6 hours should normally be enough time for rescue for coastal craft.
• Cost per person smaller than liferaft and much easier to store on small craft. Less weight!
• Much more economical for 2 man boats.
• Less maintenance, complexity, scope for failure. Can't deflate!
• Add a PLB, lanyards to other crew members.

 

[Kelpie]

Far less visible to rescuers, far more danger of inhaling spray as your mouth is at about wave height.
A survival suit worn *in* a liferaft would be an idea.
Maybe a survival suit would be useful if you have a dinghy to abandon into?

 

[bbg]

Are quick don survival / immersion suits deadliest catch style a superior life raft alternative for coastal craft?

http://www.thesafetysupplycompany.c...-PW-LJ-.html?gclid=COjvyt6Sy8kCFQb3wgod18ULCQ

• Can't fall out of or capsize it.
• No risk in transferring from boat to raft... you are the raft.
• Can don well before abandonment becomes necessary and still operate
• Allow survival inside a flooded but floating boat.
• 6 hours should normally be enough time for rescue for coastal craft.
• Cost per person smaller than liferaft and much easier to store on small craft. Less weight!
• Much more economical for 2 man boats.
• Less maintenance, complexity, scope for failure. Can't deflate!
• Add a PLB, lanyards to other crew members.

No. It is absolutely not a replacement. Jean-Marc Allaire drowned after falling overboard wearing a Guy Cotten survival suit. I can imagine that there might have been two problems. First, I am not certain it keeps you in the face-up position because of all the buoyancy in the legs. Second there is the problem of spray inhalation.
A proper lifejacket with spray hood on top of the survival suit might address both problems, but if you are thinking of it as a replacement for a life raft, think again. Think again and then discard the idea.

Story here if you read French. It doesn't mention the survival suit, but he was definitely wearing one.

http://www.sudouest.fr/2011/09/13/mort-d-un-skipper-la-transat-endeuillee-497636-1391.php#

Edit: two of your points are valid reasons for having a survival suit:
- Can don well before abandonment becomes necessary and still operate
- Allow survival inside a flooded but floating boat.

These improve chances of survival in a deteriorating situation. If you have to take to the life raft it would be better to be wearing a survival suit. But it is not - definitely not - a replacement for the life raft.

 

[Slycat]

I always thought that even a mid-range modern wetsuit is waayyyyy better than those survival suits!

As a surfer I can happily spend hours in the water in the depths of winter with a wetsuit on, not sure I'd be as confident in those suits. I just keep an old wetsuit in the boat.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Any suit that is in contact with water will loose heat - a survival suit more slowly than oilskins, but it will still inevitably lose heat. So, in the cold waters around the UK, you will eventually succumb to hypothermia. The survival suit will delay the onset of hypothermia by many hours, but won't prevent it. The purpose of a liferaft is to keep you OUT of the water and sheltered from the wind, and as heat losses to air are much less (the thermal capacity of air is very much lower than that of water), the body's reserves can keep up with it.

Basically, a survival suit is for situations where you expect rapid recovery by nearby resources.

 

[dom]

Basically, a survival suit is for situations where you expect rapid recovery by nearby resources.

I chap I met from the US Coastguard once told me that the usefulness of these things massively degrades unless the correct insulating layers are worn underneath and that they are kept largely dry. I wish I could remember exactly, but he had some shocking stat like a survivability in 10C water of something like 35% (?) after two hours in the water with oilies, 60% (?) with a survival suit which is wet inside and 99.9% (?) with a dry one. He also said the exhaustion/unconsciousness point occurs at approx 1/3 to a 1/2 the ultimate survival time' at which point the casualty becomes 100% reliant upon LJ/Sprayhood etc.

Does any of this make sense to you?

 

[AntarcticPilot]

I chap I met from the US Coastguard once told me that the usefulness of these things massively degrades unless the correct insulating layers are worn underneath and that they are kept largely dry. I wish I could remember exactly, but he had some shocking stat like a survivability in 10C water of something like 35% (?) after two hours in the water with oilies, 60% (?) with a survival suit which is wet inside and 99.9% (?) with a dry one. He also said the exhaustion/unconsciousness point occurs at approx 1/3 to a 1/2 the ultimate survival time' at which point the casualty becomes 100% reliant upon LJ/Sprayhood etc.

Does any of this make sense to you?

That all makes sense. Survival suits aren't magic; they merely slow down the loss of heat to surrounding water, but they can't prevent it. And as water has a massive capacity for heat, once you are in water substantially below body temperature, you WILL lose heat; it's just a matter of how fast. Dry clothing is a better insulator than wet; obviously the correct technical under-clothing will also slow down the loss of heat. And the business of exhaustion/loss of consciousness is because you are inevitably on the slippery slope to hypothermia. What they don't mention is that many hypothermia victims become irrational before losing consciousness, and commonly believe they are too hot - to which insistently and violently attempting to remove clothing is a common response! Survival beyond unconsciousness is likely as long as proper medical support is available - it's worth noting that the usual medical maxim taught to us was that you're not dead until you're warm and dead!

Incidentally, some colleagues of mine went paddling waist deep in Antarctica while dressed in Survival suits. No problem - but they got a ticking off back at base because it is bad for the suits!

I found the survival suit extremely constricting and too warm for any energetic activity. By their nature, they can't be breathable, so using them to engage in any high energy activity will result in the interior getting damp from sweat, reducing their effectiveness.

 

[afterpegassus]

"By their nature, they can't be breathable"

The ones I go to work in are.

 

[dom]

"By their nature, they can't be breathable"

The ones I go to work in are.

I think he means once immersed.

 

[Aurai]

A Risk Assessment Required?

Yachtaisla, mentioned "Coastal Craft" and if this craft sticks to coastal sailing, I am not sure a risk assessment would insist on a Life Raft. RNLI inshore lifeboat crew wear survival suits but do not carry a life raft, for example.

The benefits list of a life raft and the benefits list of a survival suit may coincide at certain points but overall they are different forms of protection for different situations. Only your risk assessment will let you know which safety equipment is essential.

CH

 

[bbg]

"By their nature, they can't be breathable"

The ones I go to work in are.

There are different categories. What I consider to be a "survival suit" has thermal protection. I was uncomfortably hot in it after 5 minutes at room temperature. This is what I consider to be a "survival suit".

If you can work in it for 8 hours it might be a drysuit, but can't be something with meaningful thermal protection.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

I think he means once immersed.

There are different categories. What I consider to be a "survival suit" has thermal protection. I was uncomfortably hot in it after 5 minutes at room temperature. This is what I consider to be a "survival suit".

If you can work in it for 8 hours it might be a drysuit, but can't be something with meaningful thermal protection.

Agree with both. A survival suit that will effectively protect against lengthy immersion isn't and can't be breathable; and of course, when immersed even if it was breathable in air, it won't be in water.

There does appear to be two varieties of "survival suit" - one a comparatively light duty suit that allows normal activity, but at the expense of survivability under total immersion conditions - suitable for evil conditions on deck, with short periods of immersion but with periods when not immersed. The other - which I agree with bbg is the one most of us think of when considering survival suits in this context - will protect against long-term immersion, but at the expense of mobility and preventing much physical activity.

 

[michael_w]

You can audition as a Teletubbie too: are there different colours available or do you have to play Po all the time?

 

[Neil]

but what about the orange things that come in a little pouch, that you get into with all your clothes on underneath?

 

[yachtorion]

for coastal craft?

Thanks for the replies. Amazing to hear from people with real experience of this kit. Just to frame the debate - I want to highlight that part of my original post, as Auri did. I'm talking about for coastal craft, the kind that often don't have a liferaft at the moment. Where if the worst happened and you really needed it a lifeboat or helicopter would be hovering around you within a couple of hours. I'm not thinking about offshore or the arctic...

My experience has bean that most small coastal sailing yachts don't carry anything... because of the compromises inherent in cost and stowage/weight for trying to keep a liferaft on such a small boat. I had one on my Hurley 22 but I was very much the exception.

In that situation, it still seems to me these might be a great alternative?

 

[Neil]

I agree, my little Sadler 25 has 3 of the orange suits in a bag and no liferaft, for coastal sailing. I do have a 290N LJ with spray hood, light, PLB; the combination of which should keep me facing the right way up, with spray out of my lungs and warm enough to survive until the cavalry came

 

[bbg]

As I posted in my first post, you cannot think of it as an alternative. I know someone who drowned after falling in, wearing a true survival suit. He was no more than a few miles offshore at the time, and his body was washed up on the beach within hours after he went overboard.

If you go into the water, would it be better to be in a survival suit than nothing at all? Absolutely.

Is it an adequate replacement for a life raft? Absolutely not.

It has a function, which is different than the function of a life raft. If I needed to abandon ship I would want to do so into a life raft. If I was in a swamped boat, or needed to transfer into a life raft, or was going to be picked up by helicopter I would be delighted to be wearing a survival suit.

If you go into the water in a survival suit, your mouth and nose will be no more than a couple of inches above the water, and will often be below the water in any kind of waves. I do not think that is adequate.

Edit - having said that, I do not think it is essential to carry a life raft for most coastal cruising. But if anyone thinks that "if the worst happens" they will just be floating along happily like an otter on its back they are in for a rude and, in anything other than benign conditions, possibly fatal surprise.

 

[lw395]

That all makes sense. Survival suits aren't magic; they merely slow down the loss of heat to surrounding water, but they can't prevent it. And as water has a massive capacity for heat, once you are in water substantially below body temperature, you WILL lose heat; it's just a matter of how fast. Dry clothing is a better insulator than wet; obviously the correct technical under-clothing will also slow down the loss of heat. And the business of exhaustion/loss of consciousness is because you are inevitably on the slippery slope to hypothermia. What they don't mention is that many hypothermia victims become irrational before losing consciousness, and commonly believe they are too hot - to which insistently and violently attempting to remove clothing is a common response! Survival beyond unconsciousness is likely as long as proper medical support is available - it's worth noting that the usual medical maxim taught to us was that you're not dead until you're warm and dead!

Incidentally, some colleagues of mine went paddling waist deep in Antarctica while dressed in Survival suits. No problem - but they got a ticking off back at base because it is bad for the suits!

I found the survival suit extremely constricting and too warm for any energetic activity. By their nature, they can't be breathable, so using them to engage in any high energy activity will result in the interior getting damp from sweat, reducing their effectiveness.

If you are immersed in a suit with finite thermal resistance, you will lose heat to the sea.
But your body a) generates heat all the time you are alive, and b) can lose a certain amount of heat before you suffer too much.

Divers have been lost at sea in drysuits for considerable numbers of hours and been OK, long after they'd have been dead in wetsuits or oilskins.

I don't think it's helpful to say 'these things are no good', it would be more useful to look at exactly how useful they are.
It depends on how cold the water is of course.
But the right suit might make the difference between floating about for an hour and being annoyed at how long it takes to get rescued, vs dying.
I believe I know a boat angler whose fairly cheap insulated overall thingy made the difference between needing to warm up in the pub and, at best, hospital. Worth a thought for winter dinghy and RIB outings?

It's like a lot of other safety gear, if you have a clear view of what calamity is going to befall you, it's easy to see what will help.
What we need of course is a yacht under us and someone to make the tea.

 

[bbg]

I agree with all that. To be clear I am not saying they are no good. They are clearly better than going in the water without one. It is important to know their limitations, however, and to me the suggestion that they should be thought of as an alternative to a liferaft is bonkers.

When I sail I often wear a drysuit (foulies) and LJ, with a PLB. With the thermal layers I wear underneath I have no doubt that this would give me a pretty good chance of survival for several hours in most conditions. But I would never think if this as an alternative to a life raft.

 

[pmagowan]

What we need of course is a yacht under us and someone to make the tea.

I have always thought that is key. The best way to survive is to have a boat that isn't going to sink or require you to abandon it. Efforts should, IMO, be directed towards this effect as much as reasonable.

I agree with all that. To be clear I am not saying they are no good. They are clearly better than going in the water without one. It is important to know their limitations, however, and to me the suggestion that they should be thought of as an alternative to a liferaft is bonkers.

I would not say an alternative as they are different things in roughly the same field of survival aids. There are, however, I presume, instances in which the risk/benefit advantage of a liferaft is negative whereas the risk/benefit of a survival suit is positive. In such cases it may be preferable to have a survival suit whereas in others a liferaft would be a wiser choice. I question the risk/benefit of a liferaft in pleasure craft in many instances but unfortunately it seems difficult to get any real statistics on it to make a truly informed decision.