Quote:
Originally Posted by leftbrainstuff
Most of the liferaft mountings appear to be not well thought through. Most would get torn off or be impossible to reach when needed.
Deploying them in the marina looks difficult enough let alone in the dark, in heavy seas and rain and while the crew is stressed disoriented and likely to make stupid mistakes.
A rugged liferaft is likely to be heavy too. Choosing by minimum weight also seems to be an odd way to prioritize.
If anyone has tried to deploy and get into a liferaft you will quickly realize how difficult it is.
You also need more than a liferaft. What about the ditchbag? It's like carrying a suitcase while walking a tightrope in the dark while drunk.
Those earlier pics by steady hand would all fail any safety assessment. Look to your navy for best practice. They don't hang their liferafts off the side. They also have to prove out their safety systems before they become operational. Training and practice is key.
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Agreed about mounting locations being critical and often not
seaworthy.
Our
catamaran stores its life raft in a SS cage cutout in the front trampoline, against the inside of the
hull, held in place by a set of webbing straps. During a recent
passage from
Fiji to NZ we
lost the life raft some time during the fourth night. We were experiencing 25-30 knots of true
wind at 80-90 degrees true
wind angle with 5m breaking swells, sailing at 9-12 knots with double-reefed main and 50% solent. As you can imagine, we had a lot of breaking waves over the bows, occasionally with waves
washing over the
cabin top, and many high pressure wave impacts on the inside front hulls, especially to leeward (we were on port tack, and the life raft was on the starboard side).
At some point one of the
stainless steel bails on the
stainless steel cage broke at its weld, which released one of the straps that hold the fibreglass tray that the life raft sits on. This tray broke and this was enough to provide slack to all the straps that hold the life raft and the life raft washed away. As it fell out of the life raft cage it broke part of the plastic fairing in front of the escape
hatch on that side. The painter broke and I assume that the force was enough to inflate the life raft, now floating empty in the
South Pacific 400 miles north of
New Zealand. I have called the NZ rescue centre to report the loss of the life raft.
It is apparently a
builder option for Outremers whether to store the life raft in a cage on the front trampoline or in a
cockpit locker. Unfortunately for us the first owner of our boat decided they wanted the
cockpit locker space (there are 8 large lockers back there).
Back to the original question, I'm not going to replace the life raft (which came with the boat). Our cat will float right side up or upside down and makes a better rescue platform than a life raft. In case of fire, we have a dinghy on
davits ready to go anytime. So what is the need for a life raft?