| Picture
this: You’re in the midst of your second drift past a promising kelp
paddy 30 miles or so offshore aboard your 22-foot outboard-powered
walkaround. Conditions are snotty but not unbearable — a six-foot swell
with a gusty 15-knot wind from the same direction. Suddenly you feel the deck drop away beneath your feet as the stern falls into a deep trough. You look aft just in time to see a thick whitecap break exactly over the transom, into the splashwell and onto the deck. Before you can even process what’s just happened, you’re standing calf-deep in cold seawater. The stern falls again into the next trough, the water on deck sloshes aft, weighing down the stern even more, and this time it’s not just whitewater that comes over the transom, it’s a sickening rush of green water — the entire top of the wave. Unbeknownst to you, the clamp holding your bait tank’s inflow hose to its through-hull fitting failed 45 minutes ago, and since then, water has been gradually filling your bilges, making your boat less buoyant and increasingly susceptible to swamping. A float switch should have triggered your electric bilge pump, of course, but it didn’t. Your boat is in a bad way now — water flowing freely back and forth over the transom, forcing its way from the deck down into the bilges through hatches and deckplates. The bow is rising higher, and you can already feel the hull beginning to list to starboard. At the console, you turn the key and nothing happens. Frantically, you check that the throttle control is in neutral and try again. Nothing. You flip the bilge pump switch, but the indicator LED stays dark. Your buddy is standing with his back to the companionway, frozen, panic all over his face as the boat lists farther. You’re going down — there’s no question about that now. You reach for the radio but the readout is blank. So is the screen on the GPS. A quick scan of the horizon confirms what you were already pretty sure of — there’s not another vessel in sight. What you do now — and what you’ve already done to prepare for this situation — could easily determine whether you and your buddy live or die. The “It-Won’t-Happen-to-Me” Mindset Most of us don’t think as much as we should about safety at sea, and it’s an easy thing to not think about. The fact is that most of us have never been in a situation at sea that threatened our lives or our vessels, and most of us probably never will be. With proper boat maintenance and a reasonable amount of caution and prudence, it’s actually fairly tough to get into an emergency situation on the waters most of us fish. All the same, boats go down and people die every year on coastal waters from Alaska to Panama. In nearly every case, such accidents could have been avoided — or at least their effects could have been minimized — through better preparation, equipment and planning. The “it-won’t-happen-to-me” mindset, in fact, lies at the root of all too many boating accidents. In all likelihood, it won’t happen to you, but if you assume it will and prepare accordingly, your chances of saving your vessel — or at least surviving — improve drastically. Unfortunately, there’s no way to really “practice” our reactions in emergency situations; we can go through the motions, of course, but real emergencies just can’t be created artificially. Still, performing “drills” — practicing your reaction in a man-overboard situation, for example — is a good idea. Just as important, though, is simply applying some careful thought to what might happen in various emergency situations — like the one just described — and to what kind of equipment you need in those situations and how best to use it. The Textbook Distress Call In the emergency situation described — as in most — the first and most important thing to do is to make a distress call. The “textbook” distress call is broadcast on VHF channel 16 and goes like this: “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY. This is the vessel Seabird, Seabird, Seabird.” Immediately after the distress call comes the distress message: “MAYDAY. This is the vessel Seabird. My position is three-two degrees, three-eight, decimal nine-two minutes north by one-one-eight degrees, zero-seven, decimal three-two minutes west. I am (nature of distress). I need (kind of assistance desired). There are (number of crew and condition of any injured). The vessel is (present seaworthiness of vessel). The vessel is (description of vessel). We have (any other information that might aid in the search). I will monitor channel (listening frequency and schedule). This is the vessel Seabird. Over.” Will you have the time and/or presence of mind to transmit all of the above information? Quite probably not, but include as much of it as you can in your initial transmission. The most important part, after the MAYDAY itself, is your position. Even if you’re able to communicate nothing else, be sure to broadcast your position as clearly and accurately as possible. If there’s no response to your distress call, check that your radio is transmitting on full power (“HI” on most sets). It sounds silly here, but it’s easy to forget such things when your boat is sinking. Also, should you be unable to get a response on channel 16, try other channels — especially the channels regularly used by recreational fishermen in your area who are likely to be nearby. Continue trying to raise someone on the radio for as long as possible. If someone — anyone — knows where you are and that you’re in trouble, the odds of rescue increase dramatically. What if your primary radio fails, as it did in the situation described? Have a backup. Leaving the harbor at all without a battery-powered backup radio is questionable; going offshore without one is silly. Along the U.S. Pacific Coast, a VHF radio might well be the most important piece of safety equipment on your boat. But fixed mount radios do fail — frequently. Even a problem as minor as a blown fuse can be disastrous in an emergency situation, when there’s no time to replace it. Worse yet, a flooding boat is likely to lose electrical power entirely due to shorted wiring and/or submerged batteries. Not as important as a handheld backup VHF, but close, is a handheld backup GPS. If you can transmit your exact latitude and longitude to potential rescuers, they’ll find you a lot more quickly than if you have to give them an estimated position like, “about five miles southwest of the 43-Fathom Bank.” Bad Things Happen Fast Now, if you were in our imagined situation, where would you want your backup radio and GPS to be? You’d want them right there in front of you — not buried in a duffel underneath the V-berth. The same goes for all the rest of your emergency gear. It’s tempting to stow flares, backup electronics, even lifejackets in some “out-of-the-way” place. Of all the stuff you carry on board, after all —tackle, coats, food, tools, etc. — emergency gear is hands-down the least frequently used. But when bad things happen on a boat, they often happen fast, and if you can’t get to your gear when you need it, you might as well not have it at all. Lifejackets, above all else, should be readily accessible. The truth is that very few of us actually wear them when we’re on the water, but you should be able to have your hands on one in a matter seconds. Personally, I pull my inflatable PFDs out of their locker before leaving the dock and toss them loose on the deck in plain sight, where they stay all day. Another good option for smaller vessels is to make or purchase some type of net or cord contraption to hold them under the T-top, Bimini or hard-top. They’ll never get in the way, but if you need them, they’re right above your head. For other items, a “ditch bag” is an excellent idea. Again, let’s return to our imaginary situation. Your boat is done for. It probably won’t sink for a while — most recreational fishing boats are made with enough foam flotation to keep them from sinking altogether — but it’s likely to capsize or sink so far that only the bow is above the surface. You should stick with it as long as you can, since even a flooded or capsized boat is better than nothing. At the very least, it’s more visible than a person in the water. But for all practical purposes, you’re abandoning ship and you should have everything you need on your person. “Everything you need” includes quite a bit of assorted gear. So rather than trying to remember all the things you need, gather them up from various locations around the boat — some of which may already be flooded — and hold on to them all in what is sure to be a scary and quite possibly panicked situation, you want to keep them all in one self-contained and easily accessible bag. 75 Degrees is Cold Of the various things you need, one of the most important and most commonly overlooked is some means of warding off hypothermia. Many larger vessels carry offshore-grade life rafts, which are pre-packed with survival equipment, negating the need for a ditch bag. Others carry coastal-grade life rafts, which generally include little or no survival gear, but nonetheless keep you out of the water. Also, many larger sportfishers are equipped with hard or inflatable dinghies mounted on the foredeck. If you run a vessel that carries a dinghy but not a life raft, equip both the dinghy and the “mother” vessel with similar ditch bags. In the event of flooding, get the dinghy in the water if at all possible. Do everything you can, of course, to save the boat, but if you fail, you’ll have a de facto lifeboat floating nearby — already packed with a full supply of critical gear. If, on the other hand, you don’t have time to launch the dinghy — or even free it from its attachments — you should have another ditch bag somewhere in or near the cockpit. The next step down from a life raft and/or dinghy is a survival suit. Available for as little as $350, these buoyant, waterproof suits are a wise investment. They’re not only less expensive than life rafts, but also less bulky, making them more practical for smaller boats. If there’s a drawback to survival suits, it’s that they function much like drysuits and thus must be put on before you’re in the water. For those us of who fish on small boats and/or small budgets, even a garden-variety surfing or diving wetsuit is far, far better than nothing. Cold water is deadly, and make no mistake about it — even 75-degree water is cold water. It may not kill you as fast as 50-degree water, but spend enough time in it without any kind of insulation and you’re in big trouble. In my ditch bag, I keep not only a full-length suit, but also a neoprene hood and a pair of cheap rubber fins. The hood makes an enormous difference in warmth, and the fins simply make it a lot easier to move efficiently in the water. Imagine trying to reach a floating seat-cushion, say, or an injured crewmember, or even trying to stay with a capsized boat in six-foot swells with a 20-knot wind, and you can see how beneficial fins could be. Less than a Nice Baitcaster Assuming you’ve got some means of staying warm — or at least not getting cold as quickly — common sense should give you a good idea of what else belongs in your ditch bag. Most importantly, you need to be able to show searchers where you are with visual distress signals. Most boaters keep flares in the console or in a locker somewhere, but I keep mine in my ditch bag. If my boat is disabled or damaged but still afloat, the flares are just as accessible in the ditch bag as they are anywhere else. But if my boat goes down fast, having them stowed elsewhere could mean I won’t have the time or the presence of mind to grab them before abandoning ship. Federal regulations say that vessels over 16 feet must carry three day-use and three night-use or three combination day-night distress signals. That means you can legally carry as little as three handheld flares — which will cost you less than $20. Again, though, it takes only a little imagination to see that that’s a bargain you don’t want to make. If you’re floating in your survival suit 30 miles offshore, do you really want just three chances to signal potential help? I know I don’t. Specifically, I carry nine Coast Guard-approved aerial flares ($60 total), three USCG smoke signals ($40 total), three USCG handheld flares ($20 total), two SOLAS-approved handheld flares ($30 total), one SOLAS parachute flare ($45), one SOLAS smoke canister ($45), one signal mirror ($10), one waterproof strobe ($25), and one distress flag ($10). That may sound like overkill, but at a total cost of about $265, it’s less than a nice baitcasting reel. And if I ever find myself in the water, I’m sure I’ll wish I’d spent even more. SOLAS, incidentally, stands for Safety of Life at Sea, the name of a 1983 international convention where standards for high-seas safety equipment were laid out. SOLAS equipment is more expensive than USCG-grade equipment, but it’s also a lot more effective. A Pains-Wessex SOLAS parachute flare, for example, reaches a height of 1,000 feet and burns for 40 seconds at 30,000 candlepower, while the standard Orion SkyBlazer aerial flares many of us carry reach 450 feet and burn at 16,000 candlepower for less than seven seconds. I carry a combination of types because the lower cost of USCG-grade signals means I can afford more of them — which means more chances to attract attention — but a few powerful SOLAS-grade signals might attract attention when the USCG signals fail. The big advantage of signal mirrors and distress flags is that they can be used an infinite number of times. And remember those backup handheld electronics? I carry those in my ditch bag too. You won’t get much range out of a handheld VHF when you’re floating in the water, but from the top of a swell, you should be able to hit the antenna of a vessel as much as five miles away or possibly a Coast Guard antenna mounted high on a coastal mountaintop. And, again, if you keep all your emergency gear in one easily accessible location, you’ll always know where it is, whether you’re actually abandoning ship or not. Finally, in case you spend a long time in the water, you’ll need some water and food. I carry water in a backpacking-style waterbag, but good plastic bottles are fine too. Just don’t use the gallon jugs or smaller bottles that grocery-store drinking water comes in — they’ll split out or leak around the lid. As for food, I carry a dozen “energy bars.” Remember, though, that you shouldn’t eat or drink for the first 24 hours you’re in the water or in a life raft. Abstaining early signals your body to slow down its metabolism. As Long as it Floats The ditch bag itself can be just about anything, as long as it floats. There are a number of purpose-built, duffel-style bags with integral foam flotation available for as little as $50, or you can use something like a regular nylon duffel with a lobster-trap float zipped securely into one compartment. Attach a length of light-colored floating poly line to the bag, so it will be easier to retrieve if you lose your grip. Finally, make sure everything in the bag is either waterproof or protected from getting wet. Just like its contents, your loaded ditch bag won’t do you a lot of good if it’s buried in a locker somewhere, and, on a lot of boats, keeping it easily accessible means keeping it somewhere that it’s going to get wet with spray, washdown water, etc. Zipper-top plastic bags are okay, but I prefer to vacuum-pack everything. The vacuum bags that come with most vacuum-packing devices seem to be tougher than regular freezer bags, and it’s easy to tell when they have a leak because the vacuum breaks. Keep a good stainless knife — with a lanyard for attaching to your life jacket or wrist — in the bag to open the vacuum-sealed packages. In a future issue, we’ll talk about how to make your carefully packed ditch bag a big waste of money, which is exactly what you want it to be. |