In my younger years I flew SAR for quite a number of years in the Caribbean and can perhaps share some tips, if you allow me, with regard to safety / rescue or distress situations.
Of course there are the things you always need such as passports, ID, drivers license, bank cards etc that you will want to have with you, they don't take up too much space. But as a back up, just make PDF files of them and keep them in the cloud where you can always access them. Same goes for bank account numbers, addresses, important phonenumbers etc.
If you need medicine then make sure you have that medicine as well, but the rest of the grab bag, at least for me, depends fully on where we are sailing and when we are sailing.
As an example, if we are out on the water at night the chances of getting rescued during the night are slim (unless we are very close to shore), so you need to be prepared for an overnite in a liferaft or dinghy. Night usually means fresh or cold, so make sure you have something warm with you. When you jump into the water clothes will get wet, so get those clothes off as soon as you can and get into dry clothes. How ? Vacuum some warm clothes into those long storage bags. They are water tight, don't take up too much space and you will have dry clothes.
Are you close to shore or are you far out into the sea, e.g. a passage to the Bahama's or to Alaska ? If you are close to shore and there are enough boats around you the chance of immediate rescue is much much higher than if you are 100 nm off shore. Your preparation for an off shore emergency is different than for a busy coastal emergency. You will need more equipment and supplies if we are talking off shore rescue.
Also, what are the weather conditions ?
If there is a storm with massive waves and hauling wind it is going to be much different than on a calm day when your boat has caught fire. In a storm you may not be able to get everything you want to have, so you have to make choices.
Some items you ALWAYS must have are
1. VHF radio with enough batteries to last for a long time.
2. EPIRB if possible
3. Drinking water, as much as you can bring along
4. Clothing against the cold. You can take off clothes against the heat, but if you don't have clothes against the cold....it can kill you. Cold can kill.
5. A stick with a radar reflector. May sound strange, but if you can create a radar reflection you will increase the chances of being rescued.
6. An extensive first aid kid. The liferaft should have one, but that is very basic and chances are you have injuries when you have to abandon ship in a hurry.
Everything else is preference of each person. Just make sure you have it ready for pick up and near the engine room is usually not the best place. In case of a fire you won't be able to get there. So ours is hanging next to the stairs to the fly bridge, which is also next to the stairs of the stateroom.
If you have guests onboard, give them their own grab bag, don't mix it up with yours. It is easier to grab two small bags than to move around with one large bag.
Since we all have motor vessels you may want to think about always towing your dinghy behind you instead of keeping it up on the dinghy deck or in the davits. Only when you have a fire it may be difficult to reach it, but if you would be making water after you hit a container you can still get there. Even with a fire you could jump into the water and get to the dinghy if weather and sea state permit.
Yes, you have a life raft, but if you can just step in your dinghy and motor to shore you have just saved yourself. For that matter always make sure the fuel tank of the dinghy is full and have some in reserve.
Even if you have to go into the liferaft because you are too far off shore, so no opportunity to motor to shore, keep that dinghy with you at all times. Just the engine alone is a great reflector for a radar. In calm seas even a weather radar can pick up the return of that engine. And the dinghy can be used as storage space for water, food etc.
When it comes to WHEN we sail it will be obvious that being out on the water in winter time requires different gear than in summer time. If you are sailing out in Alaska you may want to invest in an immersion suit. They are expensive, but at those temperatures they are absolutely necessary to be able to survive. When you have one onboard, just take the effort of trying to get into one in a short period of time, it can be life saving. Sometimes you may only have a few minutes and that is not the time to start reading the instructions.
As for the liferaft, make sure you have it checked and tested on time. The liferaft should inflate itself when the lanyard is pulled or when the water trigger tells it to inflate, but if that bottle is empty you will be blowing your lungs out to get the liferaft inflated.........it is not going to work.
Also, get a hydrostatic release. We did not have one, now we do and at least I know the dinghy will be released from its cradle if the boat would sink and we have not released the liferaft.
Having a liferaft is one, but getting into it is a different matter, so take some time thinking about how you are going to accomplish it. I have done many dinghy drills in my time and the older I got the more difficult it became to get into that liferaft. If you are with more people onboard let the most capable person get in first. He or she can then pull in the others. It is a simple method that basically anyone can do (unless someone weighs 300 lbs). Put your lower arms under the arm pit and let yourself fall backwards. That will give enough momentum to pull the person in the liferaft.
Once in the liferaft you want to get organized, get the water out and get yourself dry. After that is a different story, will save you the book on that one.
Lastly some lessons we have learned over the many years of flying SAR in my unit.
1. We never found anyone that we did not know was missing in the first place.
So, if you don't get a Mayday call out or have not left an itinerary anywhere, stating when you will leave from where, going to where and when you think you will arrive of don't have an EPIRB, the rescue organizations won't know you are in trouble so they will not come to rescue you.
In other words, get that mayday call out to anyone or get that EPIRB in the water and tie yourself to that thing. EPIRB signals are always received and that is the first place we will go and look. If you are tied to the EPIRB........we will find you and rescue you.
If you don't get a reply on a Mayday call, just keep transmitting in the blind as long as you can. Perhaps someone picks it up, but you cannot hear them. Keep transmitting on high power on your radio as long as you can. Stop transmitting when you have to abandon ship and once in the liferaft don't use the radio unless you can see ships or have the idea you see a SAR aircraft or helicopter.
2. We never found a person, without life jacket, in the water.
In other words, if you end up in the water without a life jacket, your chances of rescue by rescue organizations are very very slim. Make sure you wear a life jacket, an orange one preferably. Orange is what we are looking for, it does not belong in the sea, you can see it from miles away.
3. We never lost anyone who had communications.
Those were the easiest reascues we had. As long as they had a radio we could find them. Rescue planes usually have DF (Direction Finding) and that means we can home in on the signal, it is very easy to pinpoint the position. Once we found you we can drop all kinds of equipment near your position, first one will be a radio buoy so you can stop transmitting on your radio.
Again, don't use the radio unless told to do so. A radio uses less battery power when listening out than when transmitting. Any SAR aircraft that knows you have a radio will constantly be making calls on ch 16 to get your attention. Only when you hear that you should answer.
I know a phone sounds logic nowadays, but unless you are in cell phone range to the shore that cell phone is not going to be of any use. Yes, it may have GPS, which is good, but that is about it. You can use it to pass your position via VHF, but again, there is no need to use those batteries unless you are in range of the shore, you see someone or have VHF contact with anyyone. So, don't use the batteries of the handheld VHF (by constantly calling mayday every 5 minutes) unless you are called.
If you have a spare battery for the radio take it along, if you don't have it you may want to think about buying a spare battery and keep it charged. If your dinghy has a 12 V battery bring a battery charger along, you now have definitely saved your life !
Make sure the radio and the batteries are in a water tight bag, your life may depend on that radio.
4. In all my years of SAR I have never seen flares of smokes being used, nor did we ask for them.
We mostly did rescues well off the shore, many times a couple of hundred miles away from the shore. If there is a lot of wind (as there always is in the Caribbean) the smoke won't be visible at all. It gets blown away instantly. Smoke is only good when there is hardly any wind, but not a lot of boats end up in trouble when the wind is calm
If you have flares or smoke, only trigger them when the boat or plane is coming in your direction. They are not looking behind them or even to the left or right of them and a plane at 30.000' is definitely not going to see your smoke or flare.
5. Take whatever you think is required in your grab bag, but don't forget enough drinking water.
You can do without food for a long time, but you can only go a couple of days without drinking. If you can afford it get a handheld water maker. It is a hand held osmosis pump with which you can make drinking water. Water will keep you alive, food will make you thirsty.
If you don't have that pump or don't want to buy it, just take a 25 ltr jerrycan and fill it with drinking water for about 3/4. If you keep air in it it will float, so you can throw it overboard if necessary, or keep it in your dinghy at all times. Just remember to refresh it every several days.
6. Make sure you know how to operate your liferaft.
I remember one case back in the beginning of the 90's where we were searching for 5 days for a liferaft. That was based on information of 1 survivor who had gone to shore in a small rowing boat. The current being east to west he had rowed for 4 miles north to south, but he made it. So we were looking for an orange liferaft.
Only problem was that the wind had blown the liferaft upside down upon opening and none of the crew had any idea how to right it again. So they were sitting on top of the underside of the liferaft, which is .............black. We never found them, 5 people died, all of 1 family of fishermen.
So make sure you know how to operate that liferaft, best is of course training, but otherwise look it up on youtube.
7. No sharp objects in anyone's pockets.
It may sound strange, but it has happened. People made it safely off the boat, made it into the liferaft, but had sharp objects, cut the liferaft and that was the end of it.
There should be a linecutter in the liferaft to cut you loose from the boat, but all other knives should be either thrown away or kept closed at all times.
8. Don't cut the liferaft loose from the boat until absolutely necessary.
The boat is usually easy to find. With radar we can find the boat, even if it is upside down. That will give us a good start for a search area. If you can stay close to that location your chances of rescue increase dramatically
9. Make sure you have sea sickness pills and take them immediately
A liferaft is a small, closed environment. If someone gets sick in a liferaft, most likely everyone will get seasick, so try to prevent it.
There are many more things to think about, but these are the most important ones. It may be a bit over the top what I wrote, but sometimes an emergency is just seconds away. Not too long ago I wrote about our fire onboard and if we would have caught it later than we did now we would have had to abandon ship. We thought we were fully prepared, but found out we had forgotten a few items, so that is corrected and we now know exactly what is where and what to do.
If anyone disagrees or has changes or additions, feel free.
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