A fun day was spent yesterday learning how to survive at sea (a refresher course for both of us). A great RYA Sea Survival course, with an excellent instructor – Graham. After a morning in the classroom learning the theory, we spent a couple of hours at the local swimming pool, getting into and out of a liferaft wearing inflated lifevests, and splashing each other to simulate the waves!! Not easy in the benign waters of a pool, so probably pretty impossible in high seas. But, at least we know what we have to do.
For a more realistic view, a few years ago I read “117 Days Adrift” by Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, a British couple whose yacht was holed by a whale in the Pacific in 1973. They were rescued by a South Korean fishing vessel after 117 days. Everyone survived. Tales of drinking turtle blood, sucking on fish eyes, eating raw bird meat, salt sores and sunburn should have been enough to put anyone off sailing offshore. But no, hundreds of boats set off across oceans every year, and the use of liferaft is, thankfully, very rare.
SAIL DREAM DISCOVER 