Still in a holding pattern waiting to leave so today I'm going to talk about the safety aspect of sailing. Getting in trouble at sea is a bit more serious than getting into trouble on land as the availability of help is more limited and there is always the accelerated hypothermia /drowning aspect of an at sea disaster.

https://youtube.com/shorts/6o57D7OkyOI?si=s9AMMVRpO5r28Wc5


There are lots of cases of people getting into trouble at sea which sometimes end up in tragedy ranging anywhere from disabled vessel to injury to sinking. We're trying to stay out of the headlines of 1 of these events by careful preparation of the vessel and safety equipment. I will try and keep it in generic terms for you non-boaters out there.

Amaruq is required to carry safety gear to be Transport Canada compliant and being in US waters we need to also comply with their requirements. their border patrol units do board boats from time to time to do inspections so we really don want to mess with this stuff.

Safety signal devices include parachute flares and gun, handheld flares, smoke canisters and dye canisters, each of which we have multiples. The boat has an electric horn as well as handheld air horn, bull moose like calling horn and whistles on all of our life jackets. We also have this equipment for our dinghy in case we have problems when we are out in it. Additionally we have 4 handheld rechargeable LED search lights. Amaruq has red/green/ white navigation lights, a mast head anchor light, a steaming light for under power travels and a bright deck light.

Environmental safety gear on the boat includes 2 smoke detectors, 1 smoke/carbon monoxide detector, 5 different fire extinguishers, bilge high water alarm, engine compartment high temp alarm and a propane alarm-shut off system. There is an automatic built in bilge pump, a hand operated bilge pump and a backup electric bilge pump. It is also fairly easy to convert our shower sump pump and deck wash down pumps to supplement the bilge pump array if we really start taking on a lot of water!

Communications equipment consists of a primary VHF radio with extension mic at helm position, a spare VHF base station, 2 handheld VHFs (1 of which apparently floats but I haven't tested it) an AIS transmitter/receiver (Automated Identification System), and an MMSI identity (Marine Mobile Service Identity). We also have Starlink which provides internet service and cell phone when there is service coverage. Both of our heavy duty inflatable life jackets have personal AIS beacons on them as well. our chartplotter is networked to the wind speed, water depth, hull speed instruments and auto pilot so everything talks to each other. Power is provided by the 300 amp hour capacity lithium house batteries and 900 watts of solar panels.

Personal safety gear includes various life jackets depending on the weather ( we wear them whenever we are underway) our dinghy and outboard motor and a 6 person life raft in case things go really south on us in a hurry. We carry a pretty well stocked first aid kit and we have a ditch bag to throw into the life raft or dinghy if things are heading below the surface.

Hopefully all of this combined will ensure we don't end up in trouble with little hope aside from launching an SOS message in a bottle!

https://youtu.be/Tn-h_jgAVqQ?si=Cc17868fxbZ7H7SI