Launching free-fall lifeboats - GIF

**MeJasonT** · Sep 7, 2020, 12:17 AM

The 125 persons is a bit ficticious, more like 150+ it depends how mant get launched and if they are all successful. you dont always get perfact conditions to launch so half of the liferafts can be out of action, ie fire on one side of the boad. what you thought if the 126th person wanted in you tell them to bugger off, NO. Can you imagine what this thing would be like at sea, the 25 man are bad enough but this thing would be like riding one of those bananas. Im thinking wave pitch like a 2m swell. the smaller rafts will just sit on the waves like a plastic duck in a bath going with the flow. This thing looks 10m long a small boat would be pitching in and out of the water. you could end up with the guys in one half of this thing underneath the other half as if flexes over a way - what a mental idea, but im greatful all the same.

**MeJasonT** · Sep 7, 2020, 12:10 AM

A big part of the training for the 25 man lifeboats is to flip them the right way up, apparently they have either a bad habit of opening upside down or get flipped by the wind when they open. Some poor sod has to climb on top and get hold of two straps, walk backwards off the craft and flip it the right way up - the gas bottles are located at the foot of the straps to help give you a pivot point. The poor sod righting the craft usually ends up underneath as 24 burly men try climbing into it - kind of like the sacrificial lamb. Every three years we have to practice this which include the ditch in the upside down heckalopter