Closing In

Did I mention that I finally heard from the Yard : The boat is ready to go. Shaft is in, strut is in, all seems to be alright. A quick paint job around and we should be good to go.
And I got the Sat-Phone that I bet on eBay.

Safety First

Obviously, when you do not have (and do not plan to add) a SSB, a Satellite phone is a must have. Here you can see the basic of the safety at sea. Life vest. Harness. Strobe. Sat phone.
If you followed a bit, you know that we have an Epirb, a Satellite GPS tracker, a liferaft.
On this boat, we do not take safety lightly :)

There is two side of every story, and no safety measure is 100% effective.
De facto, a liferaft is merely a 30% improvement for survival by itself. By the time you might need it, it could be already blown away off the boat (30%), detached itself while inflating (30%), or you might not be able to reach it or climb into it (10%).
But well, that's always better than nothing.
Based on that assumption, the golden rule for the liferaft is to use it only when you can step into it from the boat.(i.e. the boat is already sunk and the cabin top is at water level). I heard some people do not take liferaft on purpose, to avoid to be tempted to take their chances with it and leave the boat "too early".
I guess if you purposely did not take a liferaft and you are sinking, this is a great motivation for improvisation.
Or not.

But the chances I will ever find out if I have some MacGyver skills are still extremely low.
Hopefully.