What size life raft do I need?

[Rivers & creeks]

It's all completely academic. Buy whichever make, colour and size takes your fancy, statistically the chances of using one in UK waters is so close to zero as to be unmeasureable. Millions of man-days boating every year and on average one liesure boat liferaft deployment every three years in UK. For the liesure user sailing UK/channel/North Sea a liferaft is an emotional purchase, compared to that the chances of falling in and drowning whilst using your tender are real, measureable and sadly all too frequent.

Despite all that cold logic I bought a liferaft when our first one was born, it cost me £600 and was worth every penny. I know I'll never use it, zero chance, but seeing it there makes me feel like I've done the right thing by the nippers.

As for premium vs budget - utter tosh, the most famous liferaft failiure of the last 10 years was a premium brand non-inflation in the Irish Sea, the IPC liferaft test also had a non-inflation - guess what? Premium brand.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

.... I know I'll never use it .....

You don't know that, although statistically it is likely. That's not the point though, your first born made you realise that the consequences of not having one when you need one is too much of a risk. That is the point. There are sailors who are happy to live with the consequence of having no refuge should they lose their boat. It's a choice but it's not academic, it's an attitude to accepting consequences that may prove irreversible if they are realised.

 

[nigelmercier]

Our yacht is 38' with a 3 cabins plus saloon. We will have 6 on board from time to time but mostly 2 or 4.

Then buy a 4-person one. If you regularly have 8 on board, buy two of them. We currently have two 6-person life-rafts, which I plan to replace with two 4-person units.

 

[KenMcCulloch]

There are quite often MCA reports linked to on here, and the overwhelming conclusion is to stay on the boat. Fishing vessels are nothing like yachts - the engine is a massive weight and the boat itself has very negative buoyancy. A yacht on the other hand has a comparatively small engine and is not nearly as heavy while having many more cubby holes to trap air. I agree that if the yacht is definitely going under then abandon but the majority of evidence linked to on threads like this in the past has shown that yachts rarely sink and crew would be better off wet inside the boat than bouncing in the sea in a floating tent.

I think it's wrong to make too many assumptions about 'what would happen if...'. About 20 years ago a sailor from our club, and his wife, were lost in the North Sea. Their Contessa 32 was returning from Norway and (it is presumed) struck a floating object and was holed sufficiently to go down very quickly indeed. The third person on board was bundled into the liferaft by his stepmother, she got off a very brief Mayday, but in the time it took the lad in the liferaft to orient himself and get his head out of the door there was no sign of boat or of dad and stepmum.

Yes, of course, such events are thankfully very rare but the liferaft in this case did save one life. Staying with the boat is not always an option.

 

[Tranona]

You don't know that, although statistically it is likely. That's not the point though, your first born made you realise that the consequences of not having one when you need one is too much of a risk. That is the point. There are sailors who are happy to live with the consequence of having no refuge should they lose their boat. It's a choice but it's not academic, it's an attitude to accepting consequences that may prove irreversible if they are realised.

The "saving the family" bit is often quoted, but it is at odds with reality. Not one of the reported cases of yachts foundering investigated by MAIB involved children. Logical really as foundering (and therefore liferaft deployment) occurs in extreme conditions - hardly the conditions for family sailing. There are of course life threatening incidents that do involve children, but the high standard of communications and rescue services available to coastal and cross channel sailors mean they get resolved before founderings occur.

As Lazy Kipper says, liferaft purchase for most is an emotional decision, not a rational one.

 

[dunedin]

I understood that the under filled life rafts were much easier to flip and also harder to right the less people you have. I hope it never comes to trying.

That is my understanding. Hence even though our boat has 6 berths, most longer trips are done with 2 on board. We bought a 4 berth raft as a compromise, as we feel a 6 berth raft would be
(a) much heavier to handle / launch
(b) impossible for us to right if necessary with two less than athletic people

 

[Deleted member 36384]

The "saving the family" bit is often quoted, but it is at odds with reality. Not one of the reported cases of yachts foundering investigated by MAIB involved children. Logical really as foundering (and therefore liferaft deployment) occurs in extreme conditions - hardly the conditions for family sailing. There are of course life threatening incidents that do involve children, but the high standard of communications and rescue services available to coastal and cross channel sailors mean they get resolved before founderings occur.

As Lazy Kipper says, liferaft purchase for most is an emotional decision, not a rational one.

Thats not the point of my post. It's not just about children drowning at sea, its about losing ones own life, or even anyone elses, related or not - if one is not prepared to accept that, then get a liferaft, if one is, don't get one. I find the quoted statistical arguments rather pointless in these discussions because most sane people probably realise they will never use one. If my home burnt down and I was not insured it would ruin me financially and probably mentally as well. I insure it because the consequences are not bearable to me; an emotional response, yes. I am not a robot nor a logical nerd. I think we are agreeing.

 

[lustyd]

Thats not the point of my post. It's not just about children drowning at sea, its about losing ones own life, or even anyone elses, related or not - if one is not prepared to accept that, then get a liferaft, if one is, don't get one. I find the quoted statistical arguments rather pointless in these discussions because most sane people probably realise they will never use one. If my home burnt down and I was not insured it would ruin me financially and probably mentally as well. I insure it because the consequences are not bearable to me; an emotional response, yes. I am not a robot nor a logical nerd. I think we are agreeing.

Very nicely put. If cost wasn't an issue I doubt we'd even have the discussion, I think many of us balance the risk against the cost. If your home insurance was £4000 a year you may balance that equation differently. The phrase "is the juice worth the squeeze" comes to mind

 

[cliff]

Simple solution - buy a Sadler or Etap and bin the Life raft

 

[Deleted member 36384]

.... many of us balance the risk against the cost.....

A very good point indeed which my simplistic point ignores; the cost factor does indeed carry a lot of weight when making such decisions.

 

[cryan]

I really cant understand why you would ever want to put to sea without a life raft? I would use a capacity of 125% of the number of people you normally carry as a rule of thumb when picking the size to buy. Don't worry about the ability to right it if it flips as one person can easily right a 20 man raft if they know how. You should know how as due to being responsible boaters you will have completed a sea survival course. Comfort will be of zero concern if you ever have to use it and an EPIRB will reduce the time spent in a life raft. I would also invest in a Hammar hydrostatic release unit. The first rule of putting to sea in any form of craft, in any part of the world, is that you are no longer in charge and with all the training and experience possible you are only ever reducing the risk, you never remove it. Viking, RFD and, if you can still find one, Seadog are the brands to go with.

 

[lustyd]

A very good point indeed which my simplistic point ignores; the cost factor does indeed carry a lot of weight when making such decisions.

I still think your point is valid though and I should point out I don't have kids/wife so my decision only affects myself hence the cost/benefit choice. With kids I think as someone said the cost of perceived safety becomes less of a relative concern and so we get wildly varying outcomes all based on the same basic decisions. If anyone ever lets me have kids I'll report back

 

[Pete7]

A very good point indeed which my simplistic point ignores; the cost factor does indeed carry a lot of weight when making such decisions.

True, but a liferaft is cheaper than a lift out with a week ashore and two tins of antifouling. We are in a similar position so we bought the 4 man Seago last year.

Pete

 

[lustyd]

True, but a liferaft is cheaper than a lift out with a week ashore and two tins of antifouling. We are in a similar position so we bought the 4 man Seago last year.

Pete

My boat is around £100 to lift out for the weekend

 

[Tranona]

Thats not the point of my post. It's not just about children drowning at sea, its about losing ones own life, or even anyone elses, related or not - if one is not prepared to accept that, then get a liferaft, if one is, don't get one. I find the quoted statistical arguments rather pointless in these discussions because most sane people probably realise they will never use one. If my home burnt down and I was not insured it would ruin me financially and probably mentally as well. I insure it because the consequences are not bearable to me; an emotional response, yes. I am not a robot nor a logical nerd. I think we are agreeing.

Unfortunately it is not "statistics" as the events are so rare that there is no numerical pattern either of type of incident or over time. However, the reports do show some common themes which are extreme weather, structural failure and collision. The number of incidents is so small primarily because it is relatively easy to avoid these situations so virtually eliminating the risk.

The consequences of foundering are also not easy to predict as liferafts do not always perform as they are designed, or particularly in the case of collisions there are often no survivors from the impact.

The risk to any one person or boat rises the more they venture into the danger areas - so experimental racing boats are high risk, severe weather, particularly close to land and sailing in areas outside rescue services reach all bring survival equipment nearer the top of the essential list. For coastal and cross channel cruising sailors in well found boats in good weather (and even not so good) preventative strategies are much more important.

This does not eliminate the random events such as hitting a submerged object but these seem to be really rare. However, most incidents are the culmination of a series of earlier events, most of which are avoidable and in most cases are avoided, hence the small number of extreme incidents.

 

[prv]

As for premium vs budget - utter tosh, the most famous liferaft failiure of the last 10 years was a premium brand non-inflation in the Irish Sea, the IPC liferaft test also had a non-inflation - guess what? Premium brand.

Yep - and one of the more successful recent cases (old motor-sailer swamped and sunk on the way from Ireland, crew eventually rescued off Cornwall after several days' drift) was a budget Seago. Crew said the raft performed very well.

Pete

 

[Pavalijo]

Thanks from the OP

Wow - I left the house this morning to work on the downsizing house (part of the grand plan) and returned to a vigorous debate - thanks to all who responded, the posts are really helpful.

I will take time to reach a final conclusion but my thoughts from an initial perusal of advice proferred is that money is a consideration and so will not replace until we leave the comfort of RAF/RNLI cover (and up the meagre annual RNLI donation) - maybe give the old raft one final service and live with it out of service until we take the leap.

Then we will almost certainly have only 4 on the longer offshore passges and so go for a 4 man raft given likelihood of tipping/ability to right. When we have 6 on board we will almost certainly be in holiday mode and so in the very unlikely event that we need to use the raft we will have to put up with the carrots!

I will not take the decision lightly - our first action on acquiring the boat was to sort lifejackets (non up to standard), check extinguishers and flares, replace vhf antenna and cable - but many of the posts seem to back up my first instinct that a liferaft is not essential for the trips I will be undertaking over the next 2-3 years as we build our experience before setting off.

Many thanks to you all

 

[Rivers & creeks]

Yep - and one of the more successful recent cases (old motor-sailer swamped and sunk on the way from Ireland, crew eventually rescued off Cornwall after several days' drift) was a budget Seago. Crew said the raft performed very well.

Pete

That says a lot when you call it recent - it was about 7 years ago and I think that there has either been none or just one in UK waters since. Which further illustrates that there is no logical reason for carrying a liferaft in UK waters except emotional well being and I'm a fully paid up of the "I carry a liferaft because it makes me feel better" club.

 

[john_morris_uk]

...until we leave the comfort of RAF/RNLI cover

In deference to all those RN pilots and aircrew that also provide SAR I feel obliged to point out that many of the service SAR helicopters have the large letters RN on the side of them.

They get particularly annoyed when the BBC reporter (whilst standing in front of the helicopter with 'Royal Navy' all over it) goes on to talk about the RAF rescue team. In practice RN and RAF work very well together and train together, but there is a huge misconception that anything that flies must be RAF. It often isn't.

I'll stop beating the drum for the RN now...