- [John] Hi, John here, and in this video, we're going to take a look at a life raft. We'll look at why life rafts
are designed the way they are, we'll look at some of
their defining features, some of their accessories, and then we'll have a look
at some of the equipment that they carry. Before I go too far into the video, I just want to say that
this video was produced in collaboration with Casual Navigation. So if you do wanna learn a
bit more about life rafts after watching this video, then check out some of the links in the video description area and there you'll find a
link to Casual Navigation's life raft video, where you can learn how
a life raft is launched, where you're likely to see life rafts and why we use life
rafts in the first place, instead of just using lifeboats. So here is our life raft. I'll give you a little spin. You can see that it's
got a rectangular shape. Now, the benefit of
having a rectangular shape is that it allows you
to strap the life rafts or tie them together if
there are multiple life rafts in the water. You'll see that the life
raft has a bright color. The reason it has a bright color is because we want our
life raft to be easy to see from the air or from another ship that might be floating around nearby. Remember that if you're in a life raft, it's most likely that your
ship or your yacht or your boat or whatever has just sunk. So now people are looking
for you, hopefully, and you want to make
it as easy as possible for them to find you, and that's why you have the bright color. And it's also why you'll
often see life rafts with a rectangular or
octagonal or hexagonal shape, because you can then tie them together, make a larger object in the ocean, a big bright group of objects together, which is easier to spot
rather than just a tiny dots or a single life raft. And believe me, if
you've ever been to sea, you realize just how big the ocean is. It is difficult for people to spot you, even if they know roughly
where to look for you. On the underside of the life raft, we've actually got these
four bucket-shaped items. You see one in the back,
two, three and four. Each of these buckets has
large holes in the top. And what's going to happen
is when your life raft goes into the water, they're going to fill up
with water pretty quick, and the weight of that water
is going to lower the center of gravity of the life rafts, and this reduces the
likelihood of it flipping over in bad weather or capsizing. If you come over to this side here, you can see we've got this white cord. If you're swimming over to the life raft, you'll be able to put your
foot or your knee on this cord. You'll grab hold of this strappy, and you'll pull yourself
in to the life raft through the entrance here. Ideally, you will not get wet before
you enter the life raft. But unfortunately, if the ship or the boat
or the yacht or whatever has just sunk, it might've happened quite quickly and you might need to swim
over to life raft and climb in. This is actually more difficult
than you might imagine. And it's quite useful if
somebody is already inside and they can help pull you in. But as I say, ideally, you won't get wet before
you go into life raft, you may be able to board the
life raft and then launch it. That's typical for larger life rafts, they actually use a
davit for this purpose, but even for the smaller ones, there are a lot of regulations defining how life rafts are designed. These regulations are
in a book called "SOLAS" or the "Safety Of Life At Sea Convention," and they actually have
rules even concerning how strong the base or the
inside of the life raft has to be in order that people can jump
out from a certain elevation and land on the inside of the life raft without the base or the floor
of the life raft giving way. I'm not really sure if this
piece would qualify as a deck, I'm just gonna call it a floor. You'll notice that we've
got one of these tubes on the inside. There are actually two inflatable tubes. You can see a lower one
here and the upper one here, that's the one we just looked at. These two tubes are fully redundant. That means that if one
of them was to be damaged and the tube would gradually deflate, then the other tube would be capable of keeping the life raft afloat with all of the people inside. That is definitely a good
safety feature to have. If we come over to the
left side of the screen, you can see we've got
two red circular items. These are actually over
pressure relief valves, and these are installed because
you have a CO2 canister. That's used to inflate
the life raft initially. When you inflate the life raft, you may have a bit of excess
pressure in the CO2 canister or the CO2 pressure bottle. These simply look like dive cylinders, similar to what scuba divers use. This excess pressure has to be vented in order that we don't damage our tubes. And we're gonna vent that excess pressure through these two valves here. Remember there's one valve per tube because the tubes are fully independent. There's also an additional
valve inside here for the canopy supports, that would be that one there, which is also independent
of the other tubes. If you go back outside for a moment, you can see we've got some
markings on the life raft, we've got the manufacturer's
name, that's SaVRee, which indicates to me
that this is probably the best life raft that you
can purchase for the money, it's pure quality. And if we come over to left-hand side, we've got something that says six PERS that indicates that the life
raft is made for six persons. We've got some reflective tape, has been installed around
various sides of the life raft, you can see there's
another two pieces here, another big piece here, and again two pieces here. These simply make the
life raft easier to spot even at nighttime when
people shine a torch or search lights out, these will reflect the lights which will help rescue searches
to identify and locate you. There's also a light on
the top of the life raft. You have this on at night, you'll turn it off during the day in order to save batteries, it's at the highest
point of the life rafts because that's the point once again, that's going to be easiest to see if people are searching for you. If we come down, you'll see there's another
light on the inside. This is purely for comfort. Maybe you need to read at
night or find something in the life raft, in which case you'll turn the light on. When you're not using it, once again, you'll turn it off in order
to conserve your batteries. Notice that there is a tube
on this side of the life raft. This tube is actually designed
so that you can capture rainwater and funnel it
inside into containers. Let's back up and go outside again. You can see we've got
this V-shape on the back of a life raft. This V-shape is actually slightly
separated from our canopy. So rain water will land
on the canopy, drip down, and then come down here, and this is occurring
on both sides of the V and the rainwater will be
funneled into that tube. It will then run out of the tube and you can put it into a container. So this is a nice way
to capture rain water or drinking water. This item is arguably one
of the most important items on the life raft because without water, you're not going to last very long at all. The record number of days to have lived or survived within life raft is about 133. That is a long time to
spend in a life raft. And you will definitely need water. Without water, you'll be lucky to last
more than two or three days. Without food that's okay, you
can burn off a bit of fats, maybe some of that Christmas weight that you've been carrying
around for a while, and you can probably
survive several weeks, but without water, that's
simply not the case. So it's a very important item. Now, I mentioned SOLAS before, or the Safety Of Life At Sea Convention, it's a very important
convention that came about just after the Titanic sank. Really speaking it came about
because the Titanic sank. So many, many safety rules that govern the maritime
industry come from SOLAS. Even the color of the canopy on the inside is dictated by SOLAS. You can't paint the inside of this canopy a bright neon green. The reason is that the
inside of the canopy is supposed to be a comfortable
color or non-offensive. And that's because you might
be spending a lot of time inside the life raft. You don't really wanna be
bombarded by neon colors if you're living in the life raft. Now, this one's a sort of mustard yellow, which to me is slightly offensive, but somehow it seems to work here. And I assume it is a SOLAS-approved color. The canopy itself is
actually a double canopy and you'll have a layer of insulation between the outer and inner canopies. This will help you keep the
heat in when it's cold outside and keep the inside cool
when it's very hot outside, such as when the life raft is
sitting in direct sunlight. Remember also that the water
is gonna reflect the sunlight and so it's important that you can seal up as much as the life raft as possible, not just to keep out
the wind and the waves and the seawater, but also to
shield yourself from the sun. So we've talked about some of
the design features associated with this life raft. Let's go and have a look now quickly at some of the equipment
that you're likely to carry.
