How to choose a liferaft for your boat

Why would you need one? Aside from the benefit of having a backup plan should something go wrong, a liferaft is also handy in extreme emergencies such as a fire or a sudden and unexpected capsize.

And if you plan on doing a lot of offshore racing, sometimes the rules will state that you need to carry one.

Bear in mind, too, that rescue services are generally shore-based, so you’re going to have to wait a while before help arrives. Your ability to survive this wait could come down to having a liferaft at hand.

Liferafts are generally easier to launch than a tender, especially if the boat is sinking by the stern – the swim deck or below decks in a garage are common places to stow tenders. Liferafts will deploy when the lanyard tying them to the vessel pulls a trigger to release the gas used to inflate the device. Others will automatically inflate as soon as they are fully immersed in water.

Liferafts for recreational boats up to 24 metres are defined as coastal or offshore, with the difference coming down to how durable they are – an offshore liferaft is designed to spend more than 24 hours in the water and split between tropical and temperate climates, whereas a coastal one anticipates you’ll make it back onshore within a day.

Modern liferafts are very different to what used to be little more than an inflatable dinghy. 

The better modern-day liferafts include features such as reflective tape so you can easily be spotted via a searchlight, boarding ladders, outer handholds so you can grasp the sides if you have to swim up to it, an inflatable frame that supports a canopy overhead, and ballast bags low on the pontoons that fill with water and prevent the liferaft from flipping over.

The one big problem with liferafts is that even when they are packed away inside their housing they are bulky, so fitting them to monohull boats can be awkward. If you own a catamaran, you can fix it on the trampoline.

If you’re storing a liferaft above decks, get a container liferaft. These come with their own hard outer shell that partly protects them from the elements and the rough and tumble of boating – they will still have drain holes just in case any water makes it inside the shell.

An alternative to a container liferaft is a valise-style one that uses soft packaging, making it easier to move around a boat. You can store it outside or in, and it doesn’t have to sit in a cradle as does a container liferaft, but at around 30kg-plus they’re still pretty heavy to lug around.

Externally mounted liferafts can also come with a hydrostatic release unit that can automatically inflate the liferaft if it goes several metres underwater and allow it to float free. The only downside to this is that the units will need to be replaced regularly, about every couple of years, but the upside is if you go down fast, the liferaft takes care of itself.

Take note of the capacity of the liferaft. If it says it is for four people, then yes, it will take up to four people in a survival situation, but will be extremely cramped for space – the regulations say they need to provide a minimum of 1.2 meres of space per person.

That sounds like a lot until you think you could be confined inside that space for an extended amount of time.

The tip here is to go larger to reduce the confinement. The rule of thumb is that if you have three people on board, buy a six-person liferaft so that conditions are not cramped.

Liferafts must also come equipped with survival kits that help those aboard wait for help, with basic standards ruling out how they should be equipped.

A basic survival kit for a liferaft set up for rescue within 24 hours will include flares, paddles, half a litre of drinking water per person, a floating bailer, sponges, a waterproof torch, seasickness tablets and a seasickness bag, safety knife, manual inflator, and a sea anchor to slow the rate of drift. 

The survival kits for more than 24 hours add a rainwater collector, first aid kit, thermal bags you can crawl into, one litre of water per person, and 10,000 calories per person that should stretch out to around five days worth of food.

While there are standards governing what a liferaft should have on board, there are no standards saying how they should be built so ask lots of questions.

These include things such as:

Depending on your budget, you could step the liferaft up to a SOLAS standard that applies to commercial shipping liferafts. This ensures:

Liferafts have a useful life of about a decade, with servicing required about every three years. The trouble with this is that because the servicing is a specialised task, you need to either be near the manufacturer or one of its recognised service centres to have the device re-certified.

Servicing usually sees the liferaft removed from its packaging and inflated – similar to what you’d do with an inflatable lifejacket – with every part of it inspected. Once it passes inspection the liferaft is repackaged inside a mylar bag before going back into its container or valise.

Ask if you can come and see your liferaft as it is being serviced. It will be your first chance to see where all the items are packaged – handy if you’re ever needing to use it in real life.

Servicing is expensive, sometimes costing around a third of the price of the liferaft when you bought it.

You can buy liferafts from chandlery stores or directly from the manufacturer or importer – the latter helps in working out where the raft will need to go to get serviced. 

Prices for liferafts start from around $1000 for very basic ones with no canopy right up to many thousands of dollars for a top-of-the-line unit.