Abandoning Ship

Why it may not be such a good idea in extremely bad weather
You’ll often hear the old advice never to abandon your boat until you have to step up to the life raft. It sounds deceptively easy, but the only time it works is in reasonably calm water. People who advocate it as a general rule have obviously never seen an inflatable life raft performing its antics alongside a boat in a bad gale, rising and falling like an elevator gone mad, crashing and bashing against the hull, jerking and tugging and doing its best to puncture itself or break the painter and fly away like thistledown in the winter wind. It’s up one moment, down the next, and then it’s disappearing forever over the swells to leeward.Nevertheless, the principle is sound: Don’t abandon your boat until you are absolutely, positively sure it’s going to sink. Too often, a partially waterlogged boat is found still floating months or years after it was abandoned, whereas those who actually managed to get into the life raft are never seen again. Trying to board a life raft in those conditions may be far more dangerous than staying with the boat.Fifteen lives were lost during the Fastnet Race in Britain in 1979—many of them when boats were being abandoned. It happened again during the Queen’s Birthday storm off New Zealand in June 1994, when three sailors died—the only ones who abandoned their boat and got away in a life raft.Unfortunately, the pressure to abandon ship before it’s necessary is often very great. It’s not easy to resist, particularly if you have a well-found raft in good condition.You may be exhausted mentally and physically after fighting a gale, pumping bilges, and possibly suffering a dismasting or other damage. You’ll experience a feeling of not being in control, of having made wrong decisions. You may also be frightened if the weather seems to be getting worse. You’ll certainly be scared by the noise: the banshee scream of the wind and the bloodcurdling thunder of solid water hitting the hull. In addition, you’ll probably be feeling guilty about leading your crew into danger.It all becomes too much, and the inflatable raft offers a way out—you want nothing more than to curl up in the fetal position in the soft belly of a boat. It offers peace: relief from the great mental strain of making decisions and giving orders to a crew, or trying to quell their panic. The life raft will look after you. There’s nothing to be decided: no more fighting, no more mess of tangled ropes, no more chaos down below—complete and wonderful capitulation. Just lie down and let it carry you away. The lure of the life raft is very strong.Yet, it’s a fact that few boats sink from the stress of storms, even those abandoned with hatches open. Your best bet is to think about the possibility well in advance, to be fully aware of the pressures you’ll experience to abandon ship too early, and to fight them until it’s quite evident that the raft really is your last refuge.See also Life Rafts.