Being found, being lifted

Rescue is a chain of ever-shorter-range signals, and the survivor’s job is to keep every link working: the EPIRB transmitting (lashed upright, antenna clear — it is doing more than anything else in the raft), the handheld VHF saved for when rescuers are within line of sight, flares spent only on a target that can see them — parachute rockets to be searched FOR at range, handhelds and orange smoke to be steered AT close to. The SARTSARTA liferaft transponder that paints a distinctive trail on rescuers’ radar or AIS for the final miles.full glossary →, if you have one, paints you onto the searching ship’s radar for the final miles.

A helicopter rescue has its own etiquette, learned best before it is shouted over rotor noise: TOUCH THE WINCHwinchThe geared drum that multiplies your pull on a loaded rope. Turns go on clockwise.full glossary → WIRE ONLY AFTER IT EARTHS in the sea (static from the aircraft is violent), never make the wire fast to anything, do exactly what the winchman signals and nothing extra, and from a yacht expect to be lifted from the water or the raft rather than the deck — the mastmastThe vertical spar that carries the sails.full glossary → is in the way. Strop on, arms DOWN over it, thumbs up, and let the professionals fly.

One hard truth governs lifting a cold casualty from the water: the rescue itself can hurt them, and the longer they have been immersed the more this is true. Floating, the surrounding pressure squeezes the limbs and helps the heart return blood to the core; hauled out VERTICALLY — hanging from a strop or a halyard — that support vanishes, blood pools in the legs, the chilled heart is asked to do more with less, and the casualty can collapse during or just after the lift (the rescue services call it post-rescue collapsepost-rescue collapseCardiac collapse during or just after lifting a cold casualty from the water — the reason to recover them horizontal and gently.full glossary →, and it claims a grim share of immersion deaths). So recover a cold casualty as HORIZONTAL as you can manage — a scoop, a parbuckle in a sail or net, a horizontal lifting strop, a helicopter double-strop — keep them flat, and handle them gently rather than letting them climb out under their own effort. The same caution rules the rewarming that follows: warm the core, not the limbs, because cold blood driven back from the arms and legs can drop core temperature further and stop the heart — the “afterdropafterdropThe further fall in core temperature when cold limb blood returns to the heart on rewarming — why you warm the core, not the limbs.full glossary →”. The first-aid module covers the treatment; the survival point is that being lifted is a danger of its own, planned for before the winch wire arrives. (Cold-casualty recovery reviewed against IMO MSC.1/Circ.1185 and MCA / UK Chamber of Shipping PIW guidance, June 2026.)

And the quiet half of being found: someone ashore knowing to start the search. The shore-contact discipline from passage planning is a survival item exactly equal to the flares — an overdue report from a named person turns “nobody knows” into “the Coastguard is already looking”, which on a cold night is the difference that matters.