Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave_S
That's the type of thing but I look at these things and they seem so cheaply made it would be hard to bet your life on it and grossly overpriced just to rub salt into the wound... it irks me to buy one.
I'm thinking of having a quick release on the tender and just drop it.
You could have a sea anchor that deployed as the tender fell behind the mother ship and pulled the parachute off the boat. You could have the hand held radio in the tender, flares, personal Epirb disco lights if you want, other advantages are you can see it on radar and if you still cant find them they can come to you.
Am I missing something ?
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We have the SWITLIK MOM 8 on our
Leopard 39. I disagree that it is cheaply made. It is lightweight so that it folds up compactly, releases cleanly and inflates instantaneously. It also has to be serviced/re-certified every 2 years to ensure that it is operating properly and is in good condition. Another part of the expense certainly but I guarantee you if you deploy it in an MOB situation you won't care how much it cost.
The MOM is designed to be highly visible day or night and to drift with
wind and
current in a reasonably comparable manner to a person floating in the same conditions. It's proximity to the MOB will depend on a whole list of conditions, not the least of which is how quickly it was deployed. For this reason, we assume the inflated pylon will not be precisely at the MOB's position but rather will be a common point that the MOB and the boat will both try to get to or in the case of the MOB at least try to maintain their relative position to. For a MOB situation at night, we teach that the MOB should illuminate the MOM pylon with a
rescue laser
https://www.greatlandlaser.com/that is attached to each of our PFDs. The laser is extremely effective in
lighting up reflective surfaces like the tape on the pylon from very far away.
Keep in mind this is just one element in your MOB response plan. As others suggest, leaving a trail of floating "breadcrumbs" behind your boat is an excellent idea as is regularly running MOB drills, including how to mark the position where the MOB occurred using your chart plotter and how to get the get the boat on a reciprocal course as quickly as possible by initiating a Williamson Turn or other appropriate maneuvers.
As for dropping the tender into the
water quickly, any system that would allow you to do that reliably without accidental deployment would IMO cost far more that the MOM 8. You would also be removing a very important rescue tool to retrieve an MOB from the
water once you reached them, especially in severe
weather.
We carry all the
safety devices your mention having onboard the tender on our bodies, with the exception of flares. We each have
Nautilus Lifeline submersible marine vhf radio/EPIRBS that we carry in our
weather gear">foul weather gear pocket or clipped onto to our
PFD harness, the Greatland rescue laser mentioned above as well as strobe lights. As other posts have indicated above a Personal Locator Beacon would also be a device worth considering.
As a
charter dive boat
captain for many years as well as a deep water drift diver I have been the diver in the water or searched for and picked up dozens of divers floating at the surface in all kinds of conditions and visibility. You cannot have too many rescue aids at your disposable.
Hope this helps. Stay safe.