Introduction Preparing for an offshore race can be a daunting challenge, with hundreds of tasks involving boat preparation, crew training, sail selection, last minute haulouts, and so forth. For most of the world's sailboat races, the document that determines what gear you must carry is the ISAF Offshore Special Regulations Governing Offshore Racing for Monohulls & Multihulls, frequently referred to as the Special Regs. The National Governing Organization for sailing in the U.S., U.S. Sailing, adds prescriptions (modifications) to the ISAF version of the Special Regulations. While you can buy the booklet containing the Special Regs from US Sailing for about $25.00, it’s now possible to download either the complete book or an extract directly from the US Sailing website. Select “Offshore”, then “Safety at Sea”, then “ISAF Special Regulations.” An extract is a portion of the Special Regs that contains only the information that pertains to your race. In the case of the Pacific Cup or Transpac, it’s a Category 1 race for monohulls, one of the ten extracts listed on the site. The extract is a PDF document which can be saved or printed. Oh, if only it was that simple! The challenge is that well-meaning race organizers, safety at sea committees, and board members are reluctant to leave the ISAF or US Sailing version of the Special Regs intact. Inevitably, the Notice of Race will contain a list of modifications to the Special Regs that adapt them for the special conditions present in the race you are entering. Common modifications include: 1. Minimum water requirements 2. Height of lifelines 3. Number and type of flares (pyrotechnics) 4. Carriage of a SSB, Inmarsat C, or Iridium phone 5. Inboard engine requirement 6. Amount of fuel to be carried 7. Etc., etc. Many of the changes to the Special Regs will be justifiable based on the duration, course, or conditions that are likely to be experienced during the race, and some are based on personal biases. Regardless of the origin, you need to abide by the modified Special Regs, so make sure that you are aware of the changes present in the Notice of Race and the subsequent Amendments. Generally, the person responsible for preparing a race boat and passing the Category 1 inspection will be the boat owner, owner's representative or a boat captain. The process of preparing a boat for the inspection can be very time consuming, especially if the boat is either new or has never gone on an extended passage before. Even owners of well-found cruising boats will find that there are construction details and required gear that will not be found on board, and will either have to be bought, borrowed, or rented for the race (and quite possibly the delivery home). Should I rent (or borrow) the gear? The cost of buying all of the required gear for a Category 1 race can easily exceed $20,000, and many owners will elect to do a single race every year or possibly two years. It’s challenging to justify the purchase of some of the required items if you’re going to be storing it in your garage for the following 23 months. So what items might make sense to either borrow or rent, and what are the challenges in doing this? Life Rafts: Safety experts are divided on this one. The argument for renting a life raft is that they are very costly ($3,000 to $6,000), require maintenance every few years, and have a very small chance of ever being put to use. The argument for buying a raft is that there have been documented instances of rental rafts which have been sabotaged at some point in their history, rendering them completely ineffective had they been needed. If you’re tempted to rent a raft, get in contact with your local life raft repacker early in the process (like as soon as you decide to race) and see if s/he rents rafts. If so, make sure that s/he understands the requirements of your race so that you rent a raft that is “legal”. If you decide to rent a raft from a friend or a guy on Craig’s List, you must have the raft repacked early in the process by a factory-authorized repacker who will then certify the raft for another 1, 2, or 3 years. If, for some reason, the raft fails inspection, you need to have sufficient time to find an alternate solution.  INMARSAT and Iridium Phones: While these are incredibly handy devices, it’s hard to justify the purchase for a single race. Make sure you calculate the entire cost of rental, shipment to and from the renter, and the cost of a SIM card for the duration of the race and the return. The six sections of the Special Regulations You should read the entire extract that applies to your race (again, generally Category 1 Monohulls), whether or not it actually addresses items that you’ll be responsible for carrying. There’s some really good content in the Fundamentals and Definitions (Section 1) as well as the definitions of what each Category means (Section 2). The “gear”sections are 3-5, with a final section on training (Section 6). Also, read the appendices that apply to your race, especially Appendix C, which describes one method of inspecting a boat for offshore racing. Section 1 - Fundamentals and Definitions This section describes, much like the first few rules in the Racing Rules of Sailing, what the purpose of the Special Regs is, and who is responsible for carrying them out (generally you.) It also contains a lengthy list of abbreviations in Table 1 which are helpful in unlocking the secrets in the following sections. Pay special attention to 1.02, which deals with who's responsible when a yacht participates in a race. While it doesn't specify the owner or captain, it does use the term "person in charge" which is generally the owner or charterer. The "person in charge" is ultimately responsible for the condition of the yacht, the preparedness of the crew, and the fact that all of the gear called for in the Special Regs is on the boat and ready to be put to use. There have been some instances (they are relatively rare, thankfully) where yachts have been found to be deficient in some regard. The deficiency could be a the accuracy of a rating certificate, or whether or not the crew moved ballast during a race, or whether or not a particular piece of safety gear was carried aboard. It's embarrassing to note that on some occasions, the "person in charge" abdicates his or her responsibility by blaming someone else for that deficiency. Common scapegoats include the crew, the boatyard manager, the pre-race inspector, the measurer, someone at US Sailing, the race committee, etc. Participating in a sailboat race is one of the relatively few remaining situations in life where you take full responsibility for something; in this case the preparation of a sailboat to go to sea, to race according to the rules, and to operate the boat in a seamanlike manner. It's not to be taken lightly, which is one of the reasons that racing a sailboat offshore has such a dedicated group of participants. Section 2 - Application and General Requirements Section 2 defines the various Categories from Category 0 (circumnavigations in completely inhospitable areas) to Category 6 (inland, daytime races). Since Category 1 races are "adjacent" to the most strict, most regulated races, it should serve as a gentle warning to the prospective participant that s/he is about to embark on a challenging endeavor. Category 1 races, using the US Sailing prescription definition are "of long distance, well offshore, in large unprotected bays, and in waters where large waves, strong currents, or conditions leading to the rapid onset of hypothermia are possible, where yachts must be completely self-sufficient for extended periods of time, capable of withstanding heavy storms and prepared to meet serious emergencies without the expectation of outside assistance." Of course, this is intended to put the fear of God in you so that you don't enter a Category 1 race with the presumption that you can buffalo your way through the inspection, preparation, or selection of crew that is required. One frequently quoted fact is that when you are half way from the West Coast of California to Hawaii, you are as far from land as any place on the Earth's surface. 1100 nautical miles to Hawaii, and 1100 miles to either Southern or Northern California (oh, and 12,000 feet to the bottom of the Pacific.) You are in the oceanic equivalent of the Sahara Desert, or the Northwest Territories, or the Southern Ocean. It's entirely up to you as to whether you'll be able to complete the second 1100 miles, based on your boat selection, boat preparation, crew selection, and ability to jury rig that which breaks along the way. There are no awards for fixing an inadequately prepared boat and limping into Honolulu or Kaneohe Bay or Hilo. It's expected that you'll have a successful voyage without outside assistance, and without theatrics.
Those who value fairness and seamanship also value Section 2.03. The Special Regs are not there to cause you to buy a bunch of equipment you'll never use, nor are they intended to make your boat uncompetitive. They exist to allow you to leverage the accumulated wisdom of tens of thousands of sailors in hundreds of races. Section 2.03 says that if you're going to put all this gear on your boat, make sure it's going to work as intended. The gear has to be accessible, sized correctly, and in working order. That means that if it says to have "an anchor with suitable combination of chain and rope", that you shouldn't show up with an undersized aluminum anchor with a cut-down anchor stock (which happens to fit between your stringers), 10' of 1/4" of chain and 150' of rode. Plus, that anchor and rode has to be stored securely so that if the boat inverts, the anchor and rode will not become a source of headaches to the crew. Section 3 - Structural Features, Stability, Fixed Equipment We think of Section 3 as being the "naval architect's" section, since it involves so many aspects of the boat's construction or dimensions which were decided at the time that the boat was built. If you own a Crab Crusher 35, and you don't know if your boat meets the requirements of Section 3, engage a naval architect to help you decide.
Regulation 3.09.8 describes the number and size of cockpit drains so that a flooded cockpit will drain in a reasonable amount of time. It's just not that easy to understand, and some older production boats may have inadequate scuppers/drains. Boats under 28' must have 2 x 25mm drains, while larger boats much have 4 x 20mm drains or the equivalent. Heavens, who can figure this out? On the other hand, draining any cockpit expeditiously is a virtue that will aid in the boat's ability to survive a storm, so by all means upgrade your drains if you are close to the margin. Regulation 3.10 says that, with a few exceptions, you need to have sea cocks or valves on through-hull openings below the waterline. Is that the heeled waterline or the static waterline? The Regs are conspiculously silent, but the point is that you need to be able to close off holes your hull with either valves or tapered plugs. In the vast majority of situations, gravity and your standing rigging provide a force which is more than adequate to keep your mast on its step. But in extreme conditions, or when there is an unexpected reduction in shroud tension, masts can shift or jump and end up as a potent source of hull leaks. That's the reasoning behind regulation 3.12, which requires that masts be attached to their mast step. We've seen stainless steel bolts, pieces of 1x19 wire with wire clamps, Spectra lashings, and other solutions to this challenge. You never, ever want to be on a boat with a mast butt that is jumping around, so make sure your solution immobilizes it. Regulation 3.14 goes on and on about lifelines and stanchions. Small boats (less than 28') need to have either single or double lifelines of 1/8" diameter, depending on their age. Medium length boats (28-43') need to have double lifelines of 5/32" diameter, while boats larger than 43' need to have double 3/16" lifelines. Due to the corrosion that may occur undetected in vinyl-coated wire, it's now required to use uncoated 1x19 wire or the same diameter of Dyneema single braid. Note that Spectra is the same as Dyneema, and both lines are very strong, low stretch, and abrasion resistant. Read all of Reguation 3.14, because it goes into detail about openings in the lifelines, as well as the distance between stanchions (2.2m maximum). Racing boats take widely varying approaches to preparing and cooking meals at sea. Some Transpac and Pacific Cup skippers will have prepared meals from fine mainland restaurants or caterers which are popped into the oven and served with fine wines. Other crews suffer mightily, eating three meals a day of "salty green slurry" in the words of Stan Honey. Cook stoves are now allowed to use small LPG containers which exist inside the hull, but which contain so little gas that if they were to empty into the cabin, the resulting atmosphere would not be explosive.
Many wonderful, seaworthy boats have bilge pumps which discharge into a scupper, and therefore violate 3.23.2. You'll need to reroute the discharge so that it either discharges through the hull, and not directly into the cockpit unless you have a open-transom boat. You may question the wisdom of discharging your bilge water into your cockpit, but that's up to you. You need two manual bilge pumps; one operable from above decks and one operable from below decks (3.25.5). Boats with segmented bilges often show up at inspection with a movable intake line that can be moved to wherever the bilge water accumulates. It's debatable whether a permanently installed pump can have a movable intake hose, but we leave this to you to debate with your inspector.
In addition to a set of navigation lights, the Special Regs require a second set of "reserve navigation lights" (3.27.4) which also meet the COLREGS visibility requirements. Since your boat has an engine, and since you cannot use a tricolor light for motoring, it's presumed that you also have deck-level sidelights and a stern light, so those can be used for your "reserve" lights. What's not acceptable is to conjure up a loose set of wires and lights and alligator clips with duct tape to present to your inspector as a reserve set. Nor is it acceptable to have a trio of small boat flashlight-style lights that are unacceptable for a panga in Nicaragua, let along a Crabcrusher 35. Have two sets of "real" lights that work independently, so that if a single system on your boat is incapacitated, you won't render boat light systems inoperable. Category 1 boats generally have to have inboard engines, although the Pacific Cup has allowed outboard-powered boats in the past, and the Singlehanded Transpac didn't require any engine at all. Race organizers are concerned with two situations: first, that an engine is only useful if it's immediately available to propel the boat, and second that a fuel or exhaust system that is not permanently installed may pose a danger to the crew. Good seamanship and practicality dictate that you need two batteries, especially if you are reliant on your batteries to start your engine to charge your batteries (3.28.4). Again, this varies from race to race. Some races allow a "greener" alternative to using the propulsion engine to charge batteries, but regardless of your charging source, there will be a time in every sailor's life when s/he tries to use a battery which is dead as a doornail. A second battery, fully charged and easily accessible, is vital. Finally, you need to be able to communicate with your race committee, the Coast Guard, and (possibly) your family. This generally means that you have to have a 25W VHF radio with a masthead antenna (please, not some rubber-duck antenna with no gain that's strapped to your mast), and a waterproof handheld VHF radio, and either a single sideband radio or a satellite phone for long distance communications. If you want to have a long-winded debate, walk into a yacht club bar and express a preference for satellite communications Vs. single sideband. While it might be an interesting debate (or not!), it only really matters what your race committee requires. Everything else is just a personal opinion, and an option that you can add if you like. Tall masts require lots of coax to reach the masthead, and that coax has loss along every foot. Helpful sailors have calculated just how large the coax has to be to reach the antenna with less than a 40% loss in signal strength. (Hint: you're required to have larger coax than you actually want.) Section 4 - Portable Equipment and Supplies Of all of the items required for taking a racing sailboat offshore, the least technologically sophisticated may be found in Section 4.03. Through hulls and hoses may fail at sea and when they do they let in a prodigious amount of water. A simple tapered wooden plug does wonders for stemming the flow from holes in plumbing, and if it's dry when inserted, can swell to form a watertight plug. Tie one tapered plug to each through hull, and suspend it away from bilge water to keep it relatively dry. A small brass screw eye can be used as a lanyard attachment point. Jackstays, trolley lines, or jacklines: whatever you call them, they are an integral part of staying onboard in rough conditions. They can be made of webbing or wire; many prefer webbing since it is less of a tripping hazard on deck. Jacklines do not have to run to the transom, but should run within 2m of the bow and stern. Don't use standard flat webbing of the kind that might be used to reinforce the corners of sails. Use heavy nylon, or preferably polyester webbing with a strength of at least 6000#. You can use a luggage hitch on the forward anchor point (something strong, like a pad eye, toe rail, or mooring cleat) and then lash the aft eye to another strong point using small Spectra line. By taking several passes of Spectra single braid through the sewn eye and the fixed point, you can create a turnbuckle of sorts that can exert lots of tension and be as strong as the line you're attaching. Fire extinguishers (always a good idea when at sea) are only mentioned in passing in Section 4.05.2, but they turn out to be larger (2kg or 4.4#) than the standard B-I extinguisher in the U.S. plus you're required to have two. Good idea, but if you're sailing in a Cat 1 race in a small boat (Mini 6.5, Moore 24), it's unlikely that you'll be thinking of anything other than the 2.5# Coast Guard-approved requirement. It's a shame; this rule should take into consideration the LOA of the vessel, but apparently doesn't.
If your boat is equipped with an aluminum anchor, like the Fortress, Guardian, or some of the European anchors, there's generally a "steel equivalent" number on the anchor to give you an idea of what it would weigh if made from steel. For example, a Fortress FX-23 weighs about 14#, but has approximately the same size as a 23# steel Danforth anchor. So, one way to get the performance of a larger anchor is to buy a premium aluminum anchor. Regardless of the material, race boats should have legitimate anchors with high holding power, like Rocna, Manson Supreme, Fortress, or Danforth Hi-Tensile. Chain size should be related to the anchor size (no need having a high holding power anchor with a chain that will fail), although the need to have a boat length is debatable, and the Special Regs are silent on the size and length of chain and line used. A rule that has worked well is to select line diameter is 1/8" of line diameter for each 9' of boat length (36' boat could use a 1/2" nylon line). A related rule is to use chain that is half the line diameter (1/4" in this case.) You'll need to have a first aid kit and first aid manual, and there are many good ones based on the demands of wilderness medicine. A good idea is to have the kit separated by the nature of the injury, and to have a manual that is written with the first aid kit's contents in mind. It doesn't do you any good to have a manual that recommends equipment or drugs which you don't have. It's also a good idea, but not required, to get an extensive medical history from each of your crew members so that if they have allergic reactions to drugs or chronic heart issues, don't take them (just kidding). Section 4.10 requires that you have a passive (non-transmitting) radar reflector. Radar reflectors are remarkably hard to measure and to state their performance in a concise manner. (See the 1995 test of radar reflectors on the US Sailing web site.) Octahedral reflectors (those that have three planes intersecting at 90 degree angles) are required to be 18" across according to ISAF and 12" across according to US Sailing. That includes models like the Davis Echomaster reflectors.
Emergency Steering Depending on the nature of the race you're entering, and the instructions given to the inspector, the requirement for emergency steering can be anything from a general discussion of using a spinnaker pole and floorboards off the stern, to having to demonstrate a replacement rudder and sail upwind and down. The Pacific races have had a long history of steering and rudder failures, so it's not without cause that Transpac and Pacific Cup inspectors look upon explanations of how racers will sail 1500 miles downwind by moving drogues from side to side with a certain amount of incredulity.
There are some production (and possibly custom) boats which are built in such a way that the rudder shaft and quadrant are entirely inaccessible. The lazarette and cockpit seem to have been installed after the rudder, and no boatyard worker, no matter how small, can prep the rudder to have it dropped out for inspection. Obviously, you don't want to take such a boat to Hawaii or Bermuda, since you can't inspect it ahead of time. Jim Antrim, a local and respected naval architect, has some excellent information on his web site about rudder inspection and emergency rudder considerations. What are some possible solutions to emergency steering?
If your boat sinks, you want your rescuers to know that it was you and not someone else. That's why it's required that you put your vessel name on stuff that is likely to float away in case of a sinking. Section 4.18 requires that floating items that begin with the letters L-I-F-E need to have retro-reflective tape on them. Life rafts, life buoys, life slings, and other safety gear will be dramatically easier to see at night when it has "SOLAS" tape on it. Note that this only works for the person with the searchlight; it's retro-reflective after all, which means that it reflects in the direction opposite from the incoming light. Those with the light get an immediate brilliant return, while everyone else wonders what all the excitement is about. 4.19 requires that you have an EPIRB. Few marine safety items have made as great an impact as Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons to sailors who sail in Category 1 races. Buy one with a built-in GPS receiver, register it, and make sure everyone on board knows where it's stored and how to operate it. The topic of life rafts is complicated due to the overlapping and similar sounding regulations that rafts meet. ISO (International Standards Organization) and ISAF (International Sailing Federation) came up with very similar life raft standards about 10 years ago and eventually acknowledged each other's standards. Older style rafts built to the ORC (Offshore Racing Council) standard are grandfathered in if they were built prior to 2006. You'll notice that this section of the Special Regulations have more clauses than all the Macy's in December, due to the obvious challenge of upgrading a standard while not obsoleting every raft that's in use on racing boats. If you have an older raft, make sure it meets older ORC requirements, which are detailed in Appendix A, Part 1. If you're buying or renting a life raft, make sure it complies with Appendix A, Part 2. Everyone seems to agree that insulated floors on rafts are a good idea, and yet most of the longest examples of survival have happened on rafts with uninsulated floors. To convince yourself of the desirability of an insulated floor, sit in a raft in relatively balmy conditions without one (say, in Newport Harbor with 60 degree water). In less than an hour, you'll wish that you had something between you and the ocean to keep your heat loss to a minimum. The colder the water, the sooner this will occur to you. It used to be permissible to store smaller life rafts below decks, but now all rafts have to be either mounted on deck in a cradle, or stored in a locker designed for life raft storage. This makes a lot of sense, as rafts stored below have two failure modes: they can either be inflated below which can tear a boat's deck off, or they cannot be got to the working deck prior to the boat sinking. Either is to be avoided. Store rafts where they have a chance of doing their jobs. Section 4.20.5 deals with the frequency of inspecting and repacking life rafts. Generally, the manufacturer of the raft is the best judge of this, but ISAF has arrived at the conclusion that ISAF-spec rafts should be inspected no less often than every three years, then two years, then one year thereafter. There are good reasons for life raft inspections: some items deteriorate, rafts tend to abrade on the hard folds inside their containers, and water can seep in and wreck havoc with sensitive inflators and high pressure cylinders. It's odd that ISAF prescribes the inspection interval; one can imagine that an ISAF member had a bad experience and is trying to keep other sailors from experiencing the same fate. Lifebuoys (Man Overboard Gear) are required, and due to the popularity of the Lifesling in the US, the U.S. Sailing prescription requires that one of the two required devices be a Lifesling. It must have a self-igniting light, and there are a variety of water-activated lights that can be attached to the straps of the sling. Earlier versions of the Lifesling had a purpose-built pocket at the back of the sling, but tests indicated that it would be more effective is mounted on the straps. In addition to the light, you should also attach squares of retroreflective tape to the tops and bottoms of the Lifesling so it is visible at night. The second "lifebuoy" is generally a MOM 8, or Man Overboard Module. This device was invented about 30 years ago to solve the issue have having a pole, drogue, life ring, and light in a small package. By making most of these components inflatable, the MOM 8 allows a lot of gear to be deployed in a short period of time by pulling a single pin. Without going into a lot of detail, it's common to have "deployable" gear deployed a good distance away from the victim's location, and it's accepted that even the most motivated crewmember cannot swim worth a damn when wearing foul weather gear and a PFD. The MOM will provide a point of reference for the boat as she returns for to find the victim. In some instances, the MOM can be deployed so quickly (well-trained crew, observed overboard event) that it practically hits the victim on the head as he passes by the hull. The MOM 8 requires biennial servicing, generally by the same company that serviced your life raft. Section 4.23 concerns pyrotechnic and light signals, commonly known as visual distress signals or flares. Racing sailboats are required to have SOLAS grade signals, which are dramatically more waterproof and brighter than conventional recreational signals. This is an example of where adhering to a commercial standard (SOLAS governs what ships have to carry) adds dramatically to the effectiveness of the device. You much have 6 red parachute flares ($55 ea.), 4 red hand flares ($20 ea.), and two smoke signals ($55 ea.) The flares must also be within their expiration date, which is 42 months from the date of manufacture. SOLAS signals are one of the expenses of going on ocean races: they cost about $170 per year for the three years that they are likely to be on your boat. On the other hand, they are extremely good signals, and if you're in trouble, especially at night, they make your boat stand out against the very dark sea and sky. One piece of advice would be for Transpac sailors to consider selling their SOLAS signals to Pacific Cup sailors at the end of the signals' useful life, since the races are on opposite years. That way, it might be possible to get four races out of each purchased set of signals, e.g. races in the summer of 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. It might take more cooperation than is justified, but it's possible to get four races our of a product with a 3.5 year useful life. 4.23.2 also requires a flashlight (with spare bulb and batteries) and a white spotlight for collision avoidance. These two devices are not well defined. We suggest having a compact LED flashlight for every sailor onboard, and consider having a supply of quality headlamps (again, LEDs work well) for at least half the crew and preferably all of them. The heaving line requirement is best met by a heaving line in a bag, sometimes called a (Rescue) Throw Rope. This should have a permanent place at the helm or pushpit, and should be 70' long. The one doesn't have to be particularly strong (perhaps 1,000# is sufficient), since you can use it to pull a larger line to a vessel that is going to be towed or going to do the towing. Heaving lines are a great way to get a line to a person in the water without maneuvering the vessel too close by. (4.24) The knife that's required in 4.25 can be a diver's knife, with a blunt tip, sharp serrated blade on one side, and a straight blade on the other. The sheath can be strapped to the pedestal, and a second knife can be strapped to the mast (and a third knife can be strapped to the pulpit.) Rather than try to figure out what you need in the way of storm sails, you are probably better of going to your sailmaker and asking him/her to make you a set. Storm sails are tiny, flat, and extremely strong. In survival conditions, very few sailors argue that their sails were too small. Some races have allowed boats to sail offshore without storm trysails on the grounds that, historically, the races had not been run when storms were likely. We hope that this false economy has been put to rest. Some pointers:
Here's my take on drag devices, since many sailors swear by them. These two items are completely different in construction and use. A sea anchor is a very large drag device shaped like a parachute, which is deployed off the bow and designed to reduce the sternway of a boat to less than a knot. It must be used with a long nylon line, which can be the anchor rode, to absorb the shock of waves hitting the boat. A drogue is deployed off the stern, is far smaller (perhaps 5' in diameter), and is used to keep a boat from accelerating to surfing speeds on the face of a wave. Properly sized drogues roughly halve the speed of the boat. Para-Tech and Fiorentino are two popular brands of drag devices. Section 5 - Personal Equipment Section 5 deals with the gear that each crew member wears on his or her body. Due to the differences in the standards organizations in the US and the rest of the world, the Life Jacket section get complicated quickly. If you skip down to the large US Sailing prescription in bold italics, it says that in the US you need to either have a Coast Guard Type 1 device (which makes virtually no sense on a recreational boat, whether racing or not) or a inflatable flotation device that meets either a British or European Community standard. This is curious, since inflatable flotation devices have been approved in the US for over a decade, so it's not obvious why the prescription would look east for compliance. So what kind of flotation device are they describing? It's a single chamber inflatable life jacket with 150 Newtons (33.7#) of buoyancy with a gas inflation system. In the US, such devices are generally called "Offshore" life jackets, but the Coast Guard and UL attempt to place them in the various "types" of life jackets that are also used for inherently buoyant products. This is where things get tricky, and it's probably a good idea that US Sailing and ISAF steered well clear of the confusing Type designations that are in use in the US. In the very next section, 5.02, you'll find the requirements for safety harnesses and safety lines. What becomes immediately clear for most sailors is that the way to both meet the requirements for the life jacket and safety harness sections is to buy a single product that combines both products. Thus, an offshore sailing life jacket with 35# of buoyancy (some have slight more or less, but we generally call them 35# life jackets) and a means of attaching a safety tether (D rings) is the ultimate answer. Some offshore crews will elect to go with a separate harness and life jacket, but generally the two are combined. Safety harness lines (tethers) have come under greater scrutiny, and now have multiple requirements on how they are constructed. In general, they cannot be old, they cannot use magnetic hardware, and they can't be longer than 2m. We have always recommended tethers which can be released at the chest end with a single pull of a release cord, since boats can sink quickly and you need a means to release yourself from the vessel. You'll also need to have 30% of your tethers in a double configuration so that you can shorten the length to 1m. Finally, 5.09 requires that you practice the QuickStop man-overboard maneuver on an annual basis. You will be required to show an affidavit that says that you and your crew have done such a practice (and it's a damned good idea to practice until perfect.) Section 6 - Training 30% of your crew, including the skipper, must attend a Safety at Sea Seminar every five years. Geneally, there will be a seminar scheduled in the vicinity of the race starting location in the spring before the start. For West Coast races, seminars have been held in Seattle, Portland, Vallejo, Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Long Beach, Newport Beach, and San Diego. However, every year there are crews who discover late in the process that they need to attend a seminar, but the only seminars that are available are 2500 miles away. Plan ahead! There are two categories of Safety at Sea Seminars in the US. One is a single 8-hour day of lectures and demonstrations, generally held in a yacht club or community building. This meets the requirements for virtually all US Category 1 races. The second is a two-day event which combines lectures and demonstrations on one day, and hands-on activities including in a pool with life jackets and life rafts on the second day. The two-day course is designed to meet ISAF requirements which are described in 6.01. The advantage of attending a course that meets ISAF requirements, other than the additional skills and education that you'll receive, is that your training certificate is recognized worldwide. Finally, you should have two crew members on board who hold Senior First Aid Certificates, including the specific issues which occur at sea like hypothermia and seasickness. In the US, many of the first aid and first responder courses are intended for land-based accidents and have little relevancy for mariner. Courses are offered in many communities specifically designed for either commercial or recreational sailors which will prove to be more applicable for our sport. Special Regulation Appendices The appendices of the Special Regulations contain clarifying material (life raft specifications, how to conduct a Safety at Sea Seminar), as well as practical information about medical conditions, man overboard, drag devices, and a full index of the regulations. Of special interest to the owner facing a yacht inspection is Appendix C, the Standard Inspection Card. Not every race or boat inspector will use Appendix C, although some Notices of Race may specify it. The "card" doesn't go over every section of the Special Regs, and it would be risky to presume that the inspector will limit his/her inspection to just what's on the card. Having inspected perhaps fifty yachts prior to Category 1 races, the author has a few recommendations for those facing inspection to ensure that your boat won't either require re-inspection or have a list of comments which need to be rectified prior to the start of the race.
|
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Preparing for an Offshore Race (complete article)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment