Safety
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Safety
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SECURITY: Safety is no joke, and especially in view of major, offshore passages we spent some time investigating the subject. - MAN-OVERBOARD WARNING: Although the first and foremost rule is: don't fall overboard! (and then take all relevant measures to avoid it, first of all be always clipped-on!) it's unavoidable when sailing short-crewed that only one person is normally in the cockpit and quite often the other is under-deck sleeping. If the one in the cockpit makes something stupid and falls overboard, the other one will find out only when waking up, maybe after some hours!
The man-over-board and the autopilot control units The Raymarine man-over-board "bracelets" On Shaula3 we had a Raymarine man-over-board warning system,
composed of a control unit and a number of "bracelets" to be worn at all times:
if the device went more than few meters away from the control unit, a loud siren
would wail and all hell was broken loose! The main limitation of this system is that there is no facility to locate the casualty, other than by marking the position where he fell overboard, but then again at the time there was no cheap solution to this need. The other drawback is that, rather surprisingly, the control unit is not water-tight, despite having to be installed near the companionway! When we capsized, water went inside the box and shorted it, ruining the circuitry which had to be replaced and, more importantly, shorting the power feed to ALL the Raymarine chain of instruments!! On Shaula4 we have nothing at the moment, also in view of a
less challenging program; we are considering a "Personal Locator Beacon" based
on the AIS system, so that its position would be shown on the boat's AIS
receiver (the chartplotter screen, in our case). - GAS/CO ALARMS: A gas cooker is certainly handy, fast to ignite, using a widely-available fuel, but it's definitely dangerous: an undetected leak, and the boat may go BOOM!! First line of defence is a state-of-the-art plumbing system, coupled with a strict discipline: gas must be always closed at the source unless when a flame is burning, period! No discussion, no "it's raining, I will close it later"!!
A simple gas alarm with remote sensor A hand-held gas sensor
A Carbon-monoxide alarm
Since many years we install a gas alarm on all our boats:
being LPG heavier than air, the sensor must be installed down low, near the
bilges, so it's exposed to the risk of water damaging it, so better carry a
spare! There is another dangerous silent-enemy though: Carbon Monoxide, which may come from an holed engine-exhaust or a poorly installed gas heater and which is highly poisonous: a separate sensor is required, to be installed high-up in the cabin. On both Shaula3 and Shaula4 we have both sensors installed; we
have recently also acquired an hand-held LPG sensor, which comes very handy when
looking for leaks in the plumbing. - EPIRB:
Since many years EPIRBs are mandatory in Italy for offshore sailing, so the decision of equipping one was a no-brainer, after all one of these devices may actually save your life one day!! Originally devised as emergency beacons for aircraft, EPIRBs
(Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacons) have greatly evolved over the
years; now they work over an UHF frequency, sending their signal to dedicated
low-orbit satellites that can triangulate a beacon's position within few miles.
With a modest increase in price you may get a GPS-equipped EPIRB which would
then transmit its position to the satellite, narrowing the localization to few
meters. Our choices? For Shaula3 we opted for an ACR GPS-equipped EPIRB (the top of the market, at the time). For Shaula4, also in view of a tighter budget, we opted for a GPS-equipped device from Australian firm GME, recently come to the European market and costing much less than the other.
- SART: Although the EPIRB would allow to localize the boat or the liferaft, for the circumnavigation we decided to get ourselves also a radio-beacon for the liferaft: a SART (Search And Rescue Transponder), a device which would "reply" to a search vessel's radar showing a special pattern on their screen to guide them towards the casualty. For the moment we did not get one for Shaula4, but maybe we
will get an AIS-based PLB to serve a double purpose, as a man-over-board as well
as a liferaft localizer, all for a price which would be much lower that what we
spent on the previous boat. - BURGLAR ALARM: Apart from a brief period on Shaula 2, we never had on board a burglar alarm, although we did think about it before leaving for the circumnavigation. We also considered installing a flashing light plus siren as an assault warning, but it remained in the list of the things to do and was later forgotten. The fact remains that thefts on the un-attended boat, as well
as armed robberies while at anchor, are not at all unheard-of, although luckily
not too frequent. We might have to spend some time on this
subject in the future.
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Webmaster: Gianfranco Balducci - email: gfbalduc@tin.it Last Update: 07/09/2017
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Shaula4 website (text and images) by Gianfranco Balducci is licensed under a |
