liferaft?...

[Rockter]

What six man life raft would you all recommend?

A good one... 6 man.

[Rockter]

...and offshore.

[Boasun]

And inspected annually.

[TrueBlue]

In my area, offshore sailors use and depend upon Givens

[sailingdog]

Some of the newer rafts are packaged in a vacuum packed shrink wrap type plastic and only have to be inspected every five years. If you can get one of these I would, since inspection can eat up a lot of funds..

BTW, don't get a raft that is too big. If you normally only have two people aboard, don't get a six person raft. The people are calculated as part of the raft's ballast, and if you only have two people in a six-person raft it won't be as safe or as stable as it should be.

[Rockter]

OK, but I will lok a wee bit reckless if I have the occasional crew of 6, and the liferaft is a 4 man.

Not an easy call.

Captian Berk will have to go down with the ship, methinks.

[sailingdog]

Rockter-

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever heard when it comes to boats is that "THE PRIMARY USE IS PRIMARY". If you generally sail with just a crew of two... then get a raft that covers the normal complement.

If you were to ask around and see how many people have liferafts... the answers would surprise you... very few do...and even fewer have ever been in a situation where deploying and using it was required. Also, remember that you need to really step up into the liferaft... stay with the boat as long as possible. Unless the boat is sinking out from under you, you really should stay with it.

In many cases, boats abandoned by their crew remain floating without any real problems... look at the results of the Fastnet race, where a lot of the boats that were abandoned—were found floating later on. Same thing happened in the "Perfect Storm", where the USCG pulled a crew off of Satori, but she washed up on the beach a while later in fairly good shape. There was a couple that was pulled off a 34-35' catamaran off the coast of Mexico about 18 months ago... and the boat was still floating over six months later...

[Rockter]

Saildog...

Thanks.

I am a heap big heap, and weigh about 245 lb (no beer belly, but big)... I would probably sink a two man anyway.

On a longer haul it's usually a crew of 3.

Perhaps a 4 is the way to go?

[sailingdog]

Sounds about right...as long as the two crew aren't quite as big as you...

[TrueBlue]

Unless the boat is sinking out from under you, you really should stay with it. In many cases, boats abandoned by their crew remain floating without any real problems...

Such was the case a couple years ago, when the American crew of this Nauticat 33 abandoned their ship offshore from South America during a storm. They were airlifted, but left the boat to what they thought woluld be a certain sinking.

Seven months and five thousand miles later, it was found by fishermen off Hawaii - completely intact, except for rigging, loss of the mizzen and being ransacked by pirates.