Survival training with the best
Inside the life raft my fellow survivors’ faces are garishly lit up by a flash of lightening. It’s impossible to gauge their expressions or make out who is who in our matching yellow foulies, before it goes back to pitch black. The wind noise is so loud we have to shout at each other to be heard even though there are eight of us crammed into an area of less than 10m2. The canopy over our heads is battered by waves and rain, once again the noise is deafening and when a wave breaks over the top of us the canopy is depressed against the back of our heads; we can feel the cold weight of the water and then the wave floods its way in through the door and the lookout post despite our efforts to close them securely.
There are eight of us sitting in a circle, facing inwards. Our legs are piled on top of each other in the centre, we are sitting in water up to our hips, soaked to the skin, all of the rafts equipment floats around us. Even the smallest task requires the movement of several people, the raft wobbles, we are constantly trying to bail the water out but more keeps flooding in. Waves toss the raft around, it feels unstable, soft and flexible; not like a safe haven against the sea. We are vulnerable; we will have to work to survive.
Thankfully this ordeal will end before too long. The blackout blinds will be lifted, the wave machine turned off, the sound track comes to an end and once again I can see the friendly positive faces of the RNLI volunteer crew who I’ve shared the last half an hour with in such close quarters.
In my role as a Helly Hansen ambassador I was invited to join an RNLI crew personal survival training course earlier this year. Like me, the RNLI look to Helly Hansen to supply the foul weather kit that protects their volunteer crews from the harshest of environments while they are saving lives at sea. Though what we do on the water is quite different we look for the same reliability and features from our kit, strength, durability, flexibility, warmth, water proofing, comfort and to be the best barrier between us and the ocean.
As an ocean racing sailor I need to regularly update my sea survival training and the RNLI training facilities are unrivalled for a ‘real life experience.’ The pool has limited heating and on our day of training was measured at 18°C some ten degrees below the average swimming pool temperature. We are not training in our dry suits but in the yellow two piece sets of the All Weather Lifeboat crews and despite doing up all of my cuffs and collars tight, and wearing my merino base layer the water chills me after just a few minutes and ten minutes into our swimming exercises my teeth are chattering. Technically this water is classified not even classified as ‘cold’ - which is 15°C - I can’t stop thinking about my drysuit and midlayer. I really wish I was wearing them.
The day started in the class room. I joined 17 volunteer crew members who’d come from all over the UK and Ireland and had spent the few days preceding our pool session learning other survival skills, such as fire fighting, use of safety equipment, maintenance and use of lifejackets. It struck me as we watched videos of rescues and talked about the stark reality of surviving in a life raft that the motivations that have led us to be in this classroom considering these horrendous outcomes are quite different.
For me, it’s a risk I take to compete at the highest level in a sport that I love. I hope and trust I will never need to use this training. I take every precaution to ensure my boat is fit for conditions, I have the tools and the skills to avoid terrible weather and I have the training to manage in the face of adversity. But I am out on the water because I have chosen to be there, I am driven to follow my passion, my vocation; to race around the globe, single handed in one of the toughest sporting events in the world.
For these volunteer crews, their vocations lie elsewhere. They are students, teachers, marine biologists, office managers. They have families, friends, lives on the land. Yet they will at the sound of a bleeper, drop everything, head down to their stations and go selflessly afloat to save lives. If these people end up in a life raft it would be because they have chosen to help others, they have chosen to put their lives aside to preserve the lives of others. Others like me.
We are bound together by our respect for the ocean and the understanding that training is vital to keep us safe. Inside our life raft the banter was constant, cheerful voices making wise cracks, words of encouragement, comments about how awful it is, a concerned checking that everyone is still ok. My legs and joints are sore, being folded uncomfortably under the pile of other legs. I am cold, but the air inside the raft is stuffy, my skin has already wrinkled to the consistency of a prune. But my crew are making me laugh, they deflect the discomfort with humour and the minutes go by as quickly as I could hope. I keep thinking how I never ever, ever, ever want to be in this position for real, there is nothing good about being in a life raft.
