Short Film - Need your input and knowledge please

[vince123]

Hello everyone

I´m a filmmaker who´s going to direct a short film about a couple lost at sea in a small sailing boat.
I would be very grateful if you could help me with these questions:

1. How can someone get seriously injured in a sailing boat? ( without the boat capsizing or people falling into water )

2.What could happen to a person 4 days in open sea injured and without food or water. Could you give me real life examples / ideas ?

3. Is it believable that the boat communication system fails to work? what´s the best way to make the communications fail?

Any other suggestions/ideas are welcome
Thanks for your time
vince

[celenoglu]

1. You can easily can injured if you loose your balance. Another good example is the boom moving from one direction to the other due to a small change in course.
2.
3. Electronics are prone to failure. You do not needa real reason. They can fail. If you want to show some reason for failure for your film, failure of antenna or its cable or any cable to the radio are good reasons. A small drop of water inside the radio is also good enough for failure. A fire or similiar heat source is also a good reason. The most common reason is, failure due to an unknown cause. Any electronic device can fail due to a small component failure.

[cruisingdream]

1 & 3 a cable stay breaks (the cables that hold up the mast) the mast comes down , injuries the crew member puts a hole in the deck to the water tank, tank gets contaminated by sea water and the antenna for the radio is at the top of the mast.
2 What happens to people 4 days out no food or water ... thats your story!

[Zanshin]

The most common injuries are severe burns (cooking in the galley in heavy seas) and simple fractures. Falling down the companionway is easy to do and can result in a broken hip -- complete immobility. More common are appendages breaking (fingers, wrist, collarbone).

4 days in a liferaft or 4 days floating in the water? This could only work in tropical waters, and colder and hypothermia will kill very quickly. Food is of secondary importance, fresh water is the key to survival. 4 Days in the shade with no exertion and temperatures not above 35c are possible for the healthy and uninjured, but assumes a liferaft and calm conditions.

[rikhall]

One of our more prolific posters (he is know by other adjectives as well, eh Smack) posted a link to a video of a dismasting - here it your source for injury and communication's failure.

http://www.sailnet.com/forums/seaman...rash-boat.html

You will see what happened when the mast came down - even the mast on a 26 foot or smaller sailboat can do major damage to life and or limb.

Have fun with your flick.

Rik

[Minnewaska]

A dismasting is likely to both cause injury and take down the only antenna that most boats have for the radio. Open ocean safety procedures suggest having a spare antenna (I do), but I'm sure many do not. A dismasting would occur either due to heavy winds and a rigging failure or by capsizing.

If the location is remote enough, even a functioning EPIRB (emergency gps locator) will have serious delays (ie days) before rescue personnel arrive. Without a radio, you would have no idea whether they are even coming, especially if the EPIRB floated away in a capsize, as its designed to do if the boat sinks, and you aren't able to confirm that it is sending a signal at all.

[MarkCK]

I don't know how realistic you are trying to be or you story line... But most people won't abandon a floating boat to get on a life raft. There was a race, maybe the fastnet?, where a bunch of people abandoned their boats for what they thought was the safety of the life raft and then after the storm they found the abandoned boats still floating.

[Minnewaska]

Seems like the OP intends for them to stay aboard. So, roll the boat, cause some injury, lose the mast and, therefore the antenna, the EPIRB floats away in the capsize, the crews floats aimlessly aboard for days wondering if anyone will come....... all good......

[Siamese]

Think of a boom as a twenty foot long aluminum baseball bat. You do the math.

[rikhall]

The OP said "lost at sea in a small sailing boat". That might pretty much eliminate an EPIRB .

But, I guess after anchoring last week beside Yacht Artemis at 144 feet, small is relative.

Rik