Life rafts are the last resort when everything else on board has failed. Except for a sudden catastrophic hull breach or an uncontrollable, fast-spreading fire, boarding a life raft usually means that mistakes were made, opportunities were missed, and in many cases the decision to abandon ship came too late. Choosing a life raft over a vessel built to float is not the way to end a voyage.
You might assume experienced boaters understand this equipment inside and out. Yet during a recent shoot for an online safety course, I was reminded how little even seasoned mariners sometimes know about their life-raft survival gear.
While filming a life-raft module, the raft failed to inflate fully. It happens rarely, but it does happen. I climbed aboard the partially collapsed raft, pulled out a manual pump from the survival pack, and worked the pump until the tubes were fully pressurized. Within half an hour the raft was serviceable and we completed the filming. Afterwards, a longtime sailor watching from the pier said, “I had no idea there was a pump in those things.”
If that same sailor had been forced to abandon ship, that lack of knowledge could have been fatal—mere inches away from the tools that would have saved him.
At their simplest, life rafts are a series of inflatable tubes designed to keep you afloat. Regulations require that each raft be packed with equipment intended to prevent air loss and to restore air if some escapes. Not knowing that those tools exist, or where they are stored, can cost lives.
Professional mariners complete Basic Safety Training (BST) or the Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW), a five-day program that includes a practical life-raft module. Students inflate, board, and operate a life raft and learn how to use the survival pack and its components. If you own a life raft, you’ve made a sensible investment—but if you’ve never seen one inflated, never climbed inside, and never inspected the contents of the survival pack, you are postponing essential learning until the worst possible moment: probably at night, in rough weather.
Don’t wait until then. The best time to examine a life raft is before you buy it. If you didn’t inspect it at purchase, insist on opening and looking inside the raft at the next scheduled inspection. If that inspection is still years away, research your raft’s make and model to learn what its survival pack contains, and become familiar with how to access and use the tools stored there.
The most effective way to become comfortable with a life raft is to use one in a controlled setting. The specialized subsection of BST that covers hands-on abandonment practice is called Personal Survival Techniques (PST). PST courses are offered to non-professionals as well and typically cost a few hundred dollars. If you own a life raft, PST provides direct exposure to deployment, inflation, boarding procedures, and in-raft survival techniques—training you are unlikely to acquire any other way.
If a two-day class and a few hundred dollars are more than you want to spend, consider local safety-at-sea seminars, sailing association workshops, or presentations at boat shows and festivals. Quality varies, so seek recommendations and read reviews before committing to a session.
Life-raft training is often viewed as a low priority for recreational boaters, but that perspective can be dangerous. Proper training and hands-on experience with your life-raft equipment can be the best investment you make in safety. Discovering that your raft won’t inflate—or that you don’t know how to access the pump or seal a puncture—while you’re already abandoning ship is an expensive and potentially fatal lesson.
For those interested in a structured online option, our Safety & Rescue at Sea course is available through Boaters University—search for the course and provider if you wish to enroll.
This article originally appeared in the March 2020 issue.