Abandoning well

The abandonment decision has a famous test: step UP into the liferaftliferaftThe inflatable last resort. Step UP into it — leave only a boat that is truly sinking.full glossary → — leave only when the yacht is genuinely going down beneath you, not merely frightening you. Yachts have been found afloat weeks after their crews took to rafts. When the decision is real: send the MaydayMaydayThe distress call: grave and imminent danger to vessel or life. Outranks everything on the air.full glossary → WHILE THE BOAT’S RADIO STILL WORKS, fire the DSCDSCDigital Selective Calling — the radio’s data "doorbell", including the red distress button.full glossary → alert, grab the grab-bag, and launch the raft to LEEWARDleewardThe side or direction the wind is blowing TOWARDS — away from the wind.full glossary → with the painterpainterThe bow rope of a dinghy or liferaft.full glossary → made fast to a strong point first — a raft inflated to windwardwindwardThe side or direction the wind is coming FROM.full glossary → arrives back aboard; one launched unattached leaves without you.

The raft itself earns its place long before the emergency: serviced ON SCHEDULE by an approved station (an out-of-service raft is a sealed mystery — its gas, its seams and its supplies all on trust), rated for at least the whole crew, and stowed where it can actually be deployed in seconds — a cradle on deck or a dedicated locker, not the bottom of the lazarette under the fendersfenderThe inflatable cushion hung between hull and berth.full glossary →. Rafts come in graded families — the leisure standards (ISO 9650-1 for offshore, with insulated floor and bigger pack; 9650-2 for coastal) and the commercial SOLAS A/B packs above them — and the grading is mostly about the FLOOR and the PACK: how long the design expects you to wait. Know what is packed inside YOURS, because that decides what the grab-bag must add. A capsized raft, for completeness, rights from the marked side: kneel on the gas bottle edge, haul the strap, lean back — it lands on top of you and you swim out from under; the pool day makes that sentence real.

The grab-bag is a pre-packed argument with chaos: EPIRBEPIRBThe boat’s registered satellite distress beacon — floats free and transmits your identity and position for days.full glossary → and handheld VHF, flares, water (or a means to make it), seasickness tablets for everyone (a raft makes everyone sick, and vomiting is a survival-grade fluid loss), warm covering, torch, knife, and the ship’s papers. Pack it before the season, not before the wave.

Inside, the classic first actions: CUT the painter once everyone is aboard (the knife is by the door), STREAM the droguedrogueA towed drag device that slows a running boat and holds her stern square to following seas.full glossary → (it slows drift and steadies the violent motion), CLOSE the canopy against wind and spray, MAINTAIN — bail dry, inflate the floor, take the tablets, post a lookout rota, ration nothing in the first hours but spend signals only on real targets. And mind MORALE as deliberately as the equipment: give everyone a job (lookout, bailer, log-keeper), keep a routine, and let the leader speak certainty — survivors’ accounts agree that purpose and routine keep people alive in rafts as surely as water does. Then the job becomes the one the next lesson covers: being findable.