From: Wray West <wraywest@anjumal.com> Subject: Re: [PUP] Life rafts http://www.anjumal.com/images/Port%20in%20harbor_close.jpg Nice looking boat! >We'll mounted this with the hatch just steps away from the pilot house >door. It is close enough to have the passengers remain tethered from the >time they exit the pilot house to getting into the raft about 5 steps >later. If the ultimate disaster were to be encountered, this will give us >a real chance of surviving. I could not tell--how you would deploy the pod? Is your railing removable? I once had a crew member go to the boat deck in higher seas. That was really stupid on his part! I went up to get him back. That was really stupid on my part! I was almost washed off the boat just trying to hold on. More then once I was left holding on to the boat with my hands when my feet were washed out from under me. We could not deploy anything under those conditions. Full story: one of my best friends with a wife and kids asked to have the binimi up for a few hours, I said sure (something I do not do as say yes to as easy now!) just close it and tie it up when you are done. A few hours later we were in big seas, and their was a terrible racket from above our heads, and I asked if he secured it, he said a bad word and just ran out of the pilot house. I was really torn about doing something stupid and get him back, or him possible dying and my having to face his wife and kids-I choose to get him back. We plan to deploy our liferaft from the saloon, but if fire prevents that we will deploy elsewhere. I do not want the life raft exposed to the elements on the boat deck, and I did not want to try to delopy it from there. Also the hydrostatic release deploys at 18 feet deep and in any kind of wind we would have already drifted too far apart from the boat to be able to get to the liferaft. We deploy from the cockpit, after it inflates we drag it back to the boat and jump on to the liferaft, (not in the door, just anywhere on top of the liferaft) and then roll in thru the door. If we miss the liferaft, it has an inflated floating "door mat" that makes entry much easier from the water. Our biggest concern was that I wanted to be able to delpoy our raft in case of fire, something that would require deploying the lifersft without power and before the boat sinks. Most boat fires are electrical. If the coast guard has to pick up an injured crew member, they request picking the person up from your liferaft. They have difficulty retrieving a person from a boat with things sticking up in the air, and have better luck retrieving a person from a liferaft. You might consider a small (cheap!) dinghy/liferaft just to allow the coast guard to retrieve an injured crew. I believe there are more crew injuries then sinkings.