The best liferaft is the yacht

Sea survival is a ladder of ever-worse options, and the whole subject is about staying on the highest rung: ON THE BOAT. The statistics are blunt — a crew that stays aboard a damaged, even waterlogged yacht almost always outlives one that takes to the water early. So the first survival skills are deck skills: jackstaysjackstaysThe webbing lines along the deck you clip a harness tether to.full glossary → rigged before they are needed, harness clipped moving forward at night and in any sea, one hand for the ship, and the worst job done by the most rested person.

The lifejacket only works as worn, and only works WELL when fitted: crutch strap (a jacket without one rides up over your face in the water), sprayhood (waves keep coming after you inflate), light, whistle, and ideally a PLBPLBA pocket-sized personal satellite distress beacon, registered to a person.full glossary → or AISAISAutomatic Identification System — transmitting vessels broadcast identity, position and course. A clear screen is not a clear sea.full glossary → beacon in the pocket — because the modern person-overboard problem is not flotation, it is being FOUND. Service it annually; firing a ten-year-old cylinder during an emergency is a bad time for the first test.

Buoyancy is graded in newtons, and the number on the label is a promise about what the jacket does when you can no longer help yourself. A 50 N buoyancy aid (ISO 12402-5) keeps a conscious swimmer afloat in sheltered water but will NOT turn an unconscious face clear — dinghy kit, not offshore kit. A 150 N lifejacket (ISO 12402-3) is the cruising standard: it rights most unconscious wearers face-up, and it is the RYA’s minimum recommendation for coastal and offshore work. Step up to 275 N (ISO 12402-2) when heavy foul-weather gear or a loaded harness would otherwise beat a smaller jacket — bulky clothing traps air and fights the turn (the 100 N class, ISO 12402-4, sits between, for calmer water). Then know your firing mechanism: manual fires only when you pull the toggle, automatic fires on immersion through a dissolving bobbin, and hydrostatic fires only under the water pressure a little below the surface — which is exactly why it ignores the spray and rain that set a cheap automatic off on deck. (Lifejacket classes follow ISO 12402 and RYA guidance; reviewed June 2026.)

Respect the water’s arithmetic: UK sea temperatures are cold enough that survival time is measured in single hours for the unprotected, and capability — the strength to swim, climb, hold on — fades far sooner than life does. Every decision downstream of this lesson is shaped by that clock.