Your liferaft is the one piece of safety gear you sincerely hope never to deploy, and precisely for that reason it tends to be the least understood item on the boat. It sits in a canister on the coachroof or in a locker, gets glanced at during the pre-season check, and stays there for years. Then one day it either saves your life or it doesn't, and the difference between those two outcomes is decided long before you pull the painter.

Coastal or offshore: what the category actually means

Liferaft categories are not marketing. They map to survival time, and they change what is packed inside. For European recreational use, the practical split is between ISO 9650-1 (offshore, designed for extended exposure and heavier weather) and ISO 9650-2 (coastal, calmer conditions, shorter expected rescue times). SOLAS rafts exist above that, aimed at commercial vessels, and are overkill for most yachts unless you're chartering under a code that requires them.

The honest question is not "what does my flag state require" but "how long could I realistically be in that raft before someone reaches me." A day sail in the Solent is not a Biscay crossing. If your typical programme includes anything over 60 nautical miles from a safe harbour, or night passages, or shoulder-season weather, a 9650-1 is the baseline. A 9650-2 is fine for daylight coastal hops where a VHF Mayday will reach a station and a lifeboat within an hour or two.

Two more variables matter:

  • Capacity: rate the raft to the maximum crew you actually sail with, not the boat's berth count. A raft rated for six with four people inside is more stable, warmer and easier to bail than one crammed to spec.
  • Insulated floor: on any offshore raft, non-negotiable. Hypothermia through the floor is the real killer in temperate waters, not exposure from above.

Container or valise: where you stow it decides

The choice between a rigid container (canister) and a soft valise is entirely a stowage question, and it deserves more thought than it usually gets.

A canister lives outside, on a dedicated cradle, ready to hydrostatically release or to be thrown over in seconds. It's UV-protected, waterproof, and it survives being pounded by spray for years. The downside is weight and windage on deck, and cost.

A valise lives in a locker. It's lighter, cheaper, and easier to send off for service. But it must be stowed somewhere you can physically reach and extract in under a minute while the boat is heeled, flooded, or on fire. If the valise is buried under fenders and shore power cables in a cockpit locker, you don't own a liferaft. You own a cushion.

Test this. Once a season, go through the motions: get to the raft, get it out, get it to the rail. Time it. If it takes more than 60 seconds with one person, rework your stowage before you rework anything else on the boat.

What's inside, and what isn't

Contents vary by category and by manufacturer, but the pack list on a 9650-1 typically includes:

  • Sea anchor (drogue), often two
  • Bailer, sponges, repair plugs
  • Paddles
  • Pump or bellows for topping up the floor and tubes
  • Signalling kit: a torch, hand flares, sometimes parachute flares, a heliograph, a whistle
  • First aid pack (basic)
  • Water rations and, on some packs, a small food ration
  • Thermal protective aids or a survival blanket set
  • Knife (blunt-tipped, lashed near the painter)

What is almost never included, and what you must add yourself in a dedicated grab bag:

  • A distress beacon. Which type depends on your programme. If you're not sure whether you need an EPIRB or a personal beacon, read EPIRB, PLB or AIS beacon: which distress beacon should you carry? before you buy anything.
  • A handheld VHF, waterproof, ideally with DSC and its own GPS. You will not have time to unmount the fixed set.
  • Extra water. The ration inside the raft is symbolic. Plan on one litre per person per day and pack accordingly for your worst-case rescue window.
  • Passports, ship's papers and a credit card in a waterproof pouch. Rescue often ends in a foreign port with no shore side of your life to prove.
  • Prescription medication, glasses, and a spare pair.
  • Extra flares. What's in the raft is minimal. If you've never used one, how do you use a distress flare safely is worth reviewing on a calm afternoon rather than in a raft at 3am.
  • A satellite communicator for offshore programmes. See satellite communicators for offshore sailing for the trade-offs between Iridium, Starlink and the smaller units.

The grab bag should be positive-buoyancy, tethered near the companionway, and light enough for one person to throw. If you can't lift it one-handed, it's too heavy.

Hydrostatic release, painters and the deployment sequence

A canister mounted with a hydrostatic release unit (HRU) will free itself if the boat sinks before you can launch. The HRU is a consumable: it has an expiry date, printed on the unit, typically two to three years. Check it every season. An expired HRU that fails to release is not a theoretical problem, it's the standard failure mode when a raft is found still strapped to the wreck.

The launch sequence itself is simple, but every element is worth rehearsing:

  1. Send a Mayday first, from the fixed VHF, while the boat is still stable enough to transmit. If DSC is set up correctly, a single button press is worth more than a scrambled voice call. If you're not fully confident with the procedure, how to send a Mayday and use DSC distress on your VHF is required reading.
  2. Get lifejackets on and clipped, ideally before the deck angle makes it hard.
  3. Free the raft, on the leeward side, from a point where it won't be crushed against the hull.
  4. Attach the painter to a strong point on the boat before throwing. This is the mistake that loses rafts overboard: they inflate, drift, and go.
  5. Pull the painter fully out (it can be 6 to 10 metres) until you feel resistance, then a sharp tug fires the CO2 cylinder.
  6. Board from the boat if possible, dry, without jumping. Only cut the painter once the boat is going and everyone is aboard.

Step into the raft, not down. A jump from height onto the canopy can rupture the tubes or injure someone already inside.

Servicing intervals and what a real service includes

Manufacturers typically specify a service every 12 months in the first years, extending to every two or three years for certain modern packs. Read your specific documentation, because "annual" is not universal and some packs are now certified for three-year first service intervals. Whatever the interval, it must be done by an approved station for the brand. A raft serviced by a non-approved workshop loses its certification, and in many jurisdictions its legal status as safety equipment.

At a proper service, the raft is:

  • Removed from the canister or valise and fully inflated with air (not CO2)
  • Pressure-tested for 24 hours to detect slow leaks
  • Inspected internally: seams, floor, canopy, boarding ramp, lights
  • Checked for cylinder weight (a light cylinder means a slow leak or partial discharge)
  • Repacked with new perishables: flares, water, batteries, first aid items whose expiry has passed
  • Fitted with a new HRU if applicable
  • Vacuum-packed and re-labelled with the next service date

Ask to be present for the inflation, at least once. Most stations will let you watch, and it is genuinely informative. You'll see what your raft actually looks like inflated, where the boarding ramp is, how the canopy stands, how small the interior really is with a full crew. It changes how you think about drill training back on the boat.

Budget for it. Service costs are not trivial, and the temptation to skip a year is real. Skip other things first. The raft is the one item where deferred maintenance is genuinely dangerous, because it fails silently: you find out at the moment you can least afford to.

Drills, briefings and the human factor

A liferaft is useless if only the skipper knows how it works. Every season, and every time you take on new crew for a passage, run a five-minute briefing at the dock:

  • Where the raft is, and how it's released
  • Where the grab bag is, and who carries it
  • Who takes the handheld VHF
  • Who takes the beacon
  • The muster point on deck if the boat has to be abandoned

Pair this with your man overboard drill and your general abandon-ship plan. The two scenarios overlap in the equipment they use and in the calm decision-making they demand.

If you sail with children, run through it with them too. They will remember it better than you expect, and in a real event they will need something specific to do rather than something vague to fear.

A liferaft is not a piece of equipment you buy once and forget. It is a rolling commitment: right category for the programme, right stowage for the boat, honest grab bag, disciplined servicing, and drills that involve everyone aboard. Get those five right and you have bought yourself the one thing insurance cannot: time. And in the meantime, knowing where your boat is, how it's behaving, and being able to prove it after the fact, is worth thinking about too. That's a conversation for another article.