Safety Equipment for Offshore Sailing

[RalphJS]

How about a reflecting mirror for daytime signaling, and a flasher for nightime, attached to the life jacket? Besides the whistle, I mean.

[SFC270]

A very important factor here is the direction of the load versus the run of the jackline. So a line runs parallel to the boat, fore and aft. A falling load (e.g. me) slips off the rail and into the water. The force of my weight is pulling in the middle of the jackline. This means the line has to hold my weight times the shock load times a multiplier (200% at least) due to the vector force.

This having been said, I agree there is a very large safety factor. But allowing for wear & tear, UV degredation, shock factor, vector forces, I like the idea of a large safety factor.

[xxuxx]

Capt Abbott has a wonderful way of rigging a drogue using 200' of line, looped off the the 2 aft winches. This way one may add or delete drag by sliding more stuff down the loop with shackles.

[pdqaltair]

[QUOTE=xxuxx;600481]Capt Abbott has a wonderful way of rigging a drogue using 200' of line, looped off the the 2 aft winches. This way one may add or delete drag by sliding more stuff down the loop with shackles.[/QUOTE]


Yes, I thought that was clever too.

A few months ago I pulled several drogues through the water, pulled warps with weight added, and addapted what data I could find from other sources. This rather long post was the result:
http://sail-delmarva.blogspot.com/2010/03/sea-brake-24-test-in-calm-weather-but.html

[edwmama]

What about those net webbing that I see some boats on their life lines

Are those of any value? Do they really keep crew members from falling overboard ?

Edwmama@yahoo.com

[Zanshin]

They are great in keeping loose sails, kids and animals from going overboard. I took the ones on my boat off because they really got in the way of docklines and haven't missed them since, but I do have roller-furling for the headsail and don't need to drop any sails on deck.