How to survive in a liferaft should the worst happen

No-one wants to end up in a liferaft, but if push comes to shove, your chances of survival are greatly increased by mastering your mind, say Frances and Michael Howorth

You have no idea how frightening it is to step off a sinking yacht and into a liferaft. There is just you, the raft and whatever you have managed to snatch off the sinking craft.’ Phil Nicolas is describing his feelings as he watched his yacht, Shiralee, sink from the comparative safety of the liferaft.

‘You sit there asking yourself, did the EPIRB device activate correctly? Or is anyone on their way to rescue me? You just look around at a vast inhospitable ocean and say to yourself, I must snap out of this gloom and get on with saving myself. On my first night at sea, I saw lights of what must have been another ship. I was so excited but also so very cold.

I found it very difficult to ignite the flare. The parachute flare did not work but the red hand flare did. It nearly blinded me but two or so hours later I had to admit that it must have been in vain, because no one came to my rescue. It would be so very easy to give up.

I am a strong person, but the feeling of desolation heaped upon fear is a terrible thing. Three things saved me. Firstly, the EPIRB had activated. Secondly, I’m stubborn and have a strong survival instinct, and finally, I had a very well-equipped grab bag and that really bolstered my confidence.’

Proper Preparation

With an EPIRB or two in your liferaft and a well stocked grab bag, shipwrecked sailors in theory need not worry too much. Yet there are still wild and lonely places in the world’s oceans where few other craft sail. Search and Rescue authorities may well be on their way; fixed wing aircraft may even sight you, but the fact is, physical rescue may be delayed for hours or even days.

As the hours pass and those in a liferaft begin to become stressed, it is essential to keep up morale and maintain a vigilant lookout. Good liferaft management should start when you board the raft and continue right up to the moment you leave it.

Maintain morale

As hours become days without rescue, water or food, morale management will become increasingly important.

Morale and the will to survive are very important, and morale will almost certainly be at its lowest about three hours after abandoning the yacht. Seasickness, anxiety, extreme cold and the absence of either food or water all contrive to lower morale. Skippers should ensure that ration issues are fair and on time, and they should keep people’s minds focused on eventual rescue. Never permit talk of defeat or death to become a topic of conversation in the liferaft. Competitions, songs and jokes are all important to keep everyone cheerful.

This is where items in the grab bag, such as a pack of cards or a radio to listen to commercial broadcasts, might be invaluable. Case histories have shown again and again that people with a strong will to survive can overcome seemingly impossible difficulties.

Psychological Disintegration

As time passes in a life raft, it is all too easy for psychological problems to increase, just as easily as the physical problems of surviving do. Denial can lead to apathy, apathy to depressed reaction, depressed reaction to despair and despair to psychological disintegration. Once that final stage is reached death is not far away.

The initial symptoms of this disintegration include irritability, sleep disturbance and a mild startle reaction. Later comes social withdrawal, loss of interest, apprehension, general mental and physical retardation, confusion and finally death. Death when it comes, can be a passive sinking, or it can suddenly be considered a serious option, with suicide an easier alternative to the struggle to live. This breakdown can happen to an individual but can, if not checked, affect the whole group. It can develop progressively, or a particular event can act as a sudden trigger.

One common event that can severely upset survivors in a liferaft is to watch a potential rescue craft fail to sight the raft and then turn away. At such times a strong leader may be all that keeps a group functioning and fighting on.

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A fierce determination to live, the willingness to improvise and regular activity, both mental and physical, can overcome most things. Water and food may be scarce, but they can be found in most oceans and, with rationing, life can go on. The strengths of each member of the group add to that of the others and increase the chance for everyone to reach the goal of rescue and survival.

Caring for your liferaft If the time aboard the liferaft is measured in days rather than hours, it becomes even more important to take care of your delicate vessel as well as your mind. Unlike a yacht, rafts are manufactured for just days of use rather than years. Wear is the biggest problem and any line or object that touches an inflatable raft has the potential to eventually wear a hole.

It is important to try to prevent this by padding and changing their position. Outside the raft, problems may come from sea creatures underneath. As the time in the water increases, rafts without antifouling are susceptible to weed and barnacles and these are attractive to turtles, fish, and sharks. Whilst anything touching the raft can be frightening, this may have a positive side, such as an opportunity to catch something for dinner.

Fighting fear

Talking with survivors of shipwrecks, and to those who have spent time in a liferaft, there are two mind-crippling fears that stand out as those that most preoccupy their minds: sharks and bad weather.

Sharks

Sharks are creatures that invoke fear in most sailors despite the softer picture projected by nature films. There are sharks in every ocean, and while many live and feed in the depths, others hunt near the surface. If you are in a liferaft and you see sharks, you should not throw anything overboard by day. Instead wait until it is dark. Do not fish and if you hooked a fish as the sharks appear, quickly discard it.

When sharks are circling the raft do not let arms, legs or equipment hang in the water and make sure everyone keeps quiet and still. If a shark attack is imminent, hit it with anything except your hands.

Be careful not to break or loose the article you use. Do not attempt to kill shark for food except as a last resort. They are very difficult to land without damaging oneself or the liferaft. Do not bring sharks aboard the raft unless you are certain they are dead. Cut off the head and skin the fish immediately. Do not be tempted to eat the shark’s liver because it is poisonous.

Storms

The second greatest fear is heavy weather. While it is also important for the liferaft lookout to be alert to any worsening conditions it is equally important that everyone is ready for rough times inside the raft. Good skippers will ensure that lifejackets are being worn by all on board and that anti-seasickness tablets are taken.

They will ensure sea anchors are deployed and a second anchor prepared for use. Skippers should make sure all equipment is stowed away or is tied on with lanyards. The entrances to the raft should be closed to prevent water entering. Crew should be evenly distributed around the liferaft with backs against the tubes and feet into the centre.

If the liferaft is not full, crew should sit to windward to aid stability. In very rough conditions a second sea anchor can be streamed. If this becomes necessary, ensure the drogues’ lines are of different lengths to prevent fouling.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst

As a responsible skipper, part of the planning for a passage includes ensuring the correct safety equipment is carried aboard your yacht. It’s not easy to part with hard-earned money for an item of safety equipment that you doubt will be used and may even be thrown away after a few years still unopened.

It is easy to cut corners at the purchasing stage and buy only the barest minimum. Sadly, when the unimaginable catastrophe happens it will probably be too late to go back and purchase that safety item you previously rejected as an unnecessary expense.

The danger is greater the further you go offshore, because of the higher risk of being at sea in rough weather. While you might not run aground in the middle of an ocean you can hit a submerged container or a sleeping whale. Through-hulls and keels have been known to fail. Shipwrecks can happen anywhere, at any time.

If you do have to take to your liferaft, what can you do to improve your chances of being rescued, without injury or loss of life? Take time to consider this at the passage planning stage of the voyage. Decide what to select for your emergency bag – and store a liferaft survival book in that grab bag so you will have it with you when you need it most.

One sailor who owes his life to positive action, clear thinking and an EPIRB is Pablo Pirenack. He left the USA to fulfil a lifelong ambition to sail a small yacht single-handed across the Atlantic. He got more than he bargained for when a hurricane battered his 8m yacht to bits, and he took to his liferaft carrying his grab bag. It was his EPIRB stowed inside the bag that saved him by enabling a gas tanker to come to his rescue, just 26 hours after he first hit the transmit button.

No shame in calling for help

Other sailors have not been so lucky when it comes to speed of rescue. Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava drifted powerless for months while trying to sail Sea Nymph, a 15m sailboat, 2,600 miles from Hawaii to Tahiti. The pair had a grab bag. In it was an EPIRB, but they never turned it on. Appel believed the beacons should be used only when sailors are in imminent danger or at risk of death within 24 hours. She said, ‘EPIRB calls are for people who are in an immediate life-threatening scenario.’

She felt that it would be shameful to call on the United States Coast Guard (UCSG) resources when not in imminent peril as someone else could perish because of it. The Coastguard officer responsible for search and rescue operations, said that there is no shame in using an EPIRB in any true emergency and in this case stated, ‘The women would have been found very quickly if only they used what they had inside their grab bag.’ He added,

‘Had they turned their EPIRB on, a signal should have been received very, very quickly and we would have known a whole lot sooner that this vessel was in distress.’

Not all disasters at sea end well. While attempting to sail across the Atlantic, tragedy cost the lives of four sailors. Cheeki Rafiki, a 12m Bénéteau sailing yacht, lost her keel roughly 720 miles south east of Nova Scotia and subsequently capsized in a Force 7 storm.

The yacht’s EPIRB was never activated, but rescue services were able to locate her upturned hull before she sank because two of the on-board Personal Lifesaving Beacons (PLB) devices had sent out emergency signals. Sadly, the crew where never found. Once the storm abated US Navy divers boarded the still-floating wreck and confirmed her liferaft was still secured to its storage location. Clearly the crew had not had chance to bring their raft or their grab bag out onto the deck.

We will never know why the boat’s EPIRB was not activated, or why the liferaft failed to be deployed. Nor will we know what state of mind the crew were in when they began to consider their options as the storm began to toss their boat about.

What to do in a liferaft

Immediate actions:

• Cut the painter and get clear of the ship
• Look for and pick up other survivors
• Stream sea anchor when clear of ship
• Close the raft entrance
• Read survival instructions

Subsequent actions:

• Identify a person in charge of the liferaft
• Post a lookout
• Open equipment pack
• Distribute seasickness medicine and bags
• Dry and inflate the floor
• Administer first aid
• Arrange watches and duties – skipper, lookout, inside watch to manage needs and equipment within the raft
• Check liferaft for damage and all features functioning properly
• Deploy EPIRB and SART and start signalling routine
• Protect against heat and cold
• Evaluate and plan water and food rations
• Establish routine and morale boosting activities
• Set up toilet arrangements – over the side in calm weather, and in a bucket or bailer in rough weather
• Begin liferaft maintenance
• Prepare for rescue by air or sea

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