Do You Have an Abandon Ship Bag?

When travelling recently on the QE2 I was struck by how seriously they (and , I presume, their insurance company) take the abandon ship training. On the first day of the passage, at the ship siren signal all passengers are required to meet in designated areas where they are instructed by the crew on the use of safety equipment and the procedure to board life boats. Do not try to sneak out, for your stewart is instructed to catch you and direct you gently but firmly where you are expected to be.

The equivalent procedure in small boats is for the skipper to let his crew and passengers know what each of them is supposed to do in case (touch wood...) the boat started to sink and you had to abandon her in a hurry. In these circumstances, a most important decision for your safety is what you bring with you on the life raft. The problem is that in most abandon ship situations you do not have much time to run through check lists or to try to remember where you or your spouse last stowed your flashlight or the knife or whatever. It is therefore prudent to pack in advance what you need in a bag - possibly, a floating bag - so that all you would have to do when abandoning ship is to grab it and jump into the life raft.

What you put in the abandon ship bag is partly a function of where you do your sailing (and therefore the time it may take for you to be rescued). But regardless of whether one is in the North Atlantic or in the Aegean Sea, anybody who is forced to repair to a life raft has three priorities to attend to:
1) to stay afloat;
2) to stay alive;
3) to let his rescuers know where he is.

The first may require nothing more than a knife to cut loose your raft from the sinking boat and a small hand pump to keep the life raft inflated (the latter normally comes with the raft, but double check nevertheless). The second is more complicated. You certainly need a set of alert/locate flares and/or a flare launcher. To pinpoint your position it is also useful to have a signalling mirror (for the day) and a flashlight (for the night). A radar reflector and a hand held VHF radio are invaluable to direct rescue vessels or aircraft, particularly when visibility conditions are not ideal. And, last but not least, an EPIRB is essential when you sail offshore and are out of range of VHF stations (the EPIRB allows you to send a Mayday via satellite, enables the satellite to locate your position within 1-2 miles, and directs the radio direction finders of the rescuers to your location).

As to the objective of staying alive (and not too uncomfortable in a rotten situation), the immediate dangers are often hypothermia, sea sickness and sun burns. For hypothermia, a couple of blankets of space age material will do: they are lightweight, inexpensive and take very little room. As for your first aid kit, in addition to sea sickness pills and sunscreen lotion, if you expect that rescue may take days, it would be prudent to pack whatever long term medication (e.g. for diabetes) you or your crew may need. In this situation, it is also prudent to have emergency rations as well as an emergency water maker to desalinate sea water. Even a fishing kit may be useful if you have to stay in your raft a really long time.....

A final word. An abandon ship bag is for your peace of mind. Hopefully, you will never have to use it. But if you do, you know you will be ready. And to me this is part of the pleasures of sailing.