Some lucky survivors escape with a dinghy or inflatable sport boat as well as a life raft. With two boats, survivors can fan out to work or rest more efficiently, and set sails to make real headway. A dinghy should be unsinkable or have watertight compartments, maybe even have its floatation augmented by fenders or inflatable collar secured to the outside. It should also carry additional emergency gear, tarps, sea anchor and more.

Personally, I wish for a life raft shaped like a sport boat, but wider, with a high bow to resist pitchpoling, a retractable ballast system, and a reasonable rig or kite sails for propulsion. But most ocean disasters involve aircraft, commercial shipping, and oil rigs, not voyaging yachts, so most bureaucracies promote stability of position to assist Search and Rescue. If you want a good sailing lifeboat that can be carried on a small yacht, you'll have to create it.

'IMMEDIATELY DISASTROUS'

Why is this bottom tube soft? Leaking already? I hope we have some good repair clamps. Those glue patches that say "Material should be dry prior to application" are as cruel a joke as the fishing kit that consists of a 50-foot piece of string and a hook. Why didn't we look closer at the equipment that came with the raft? Good thing we have our own gear. Also good thing that most life rafts have two separate inflation chambers. Still, with a bottom chamber collapsed, water forces distort the shape so that the raft will sink surprisingly low in the water. The entire floor becomes like rubber quick sand. Waves easily wash across the few inches of upper tube remaining above water. If we can't fix it, we'll suffer more sores and hypothermia, and living becomes nearly impossible over even the modest term. Can you blow up the raft by mouth? Most good valves require a pump, though a few can be operated by mouth. What about the pump itself? Is it easy to use? Have we got a spare in case it breaks or is lost?

In most single-inflation-chamber rafts, a hole is immediately disastrous. Some rafts have inner safety tubes, however. Switlik's single-tube coastal raft is divided by inner socks that are forced by air pressure from the secure side into the damaged half of the tube as air escapes. The Butlers lived happily in this kind of raft for 66 days in 1989. Well, maybe not happily. But in most single-tube rafts, or sport boats, if you get a leak you've got a problem that can ruin your whole life. Your only hope then rests upon effective and very easy-to-deploy raft-patching clamps or similar repairs.

Steven CallahanIt finally rains. We're smart enough to carry a reverse osmosis pump, but rain will allow us to drink more, build our stock and wash to heal our sores. Canopy gutter systems are a bonus. Some canopies still break down in time, though, making water undrinkable. You can't be sure when they're new how they will wear over time, so we carry some plastic sheets or space blankets to catch water and containers to store it, don't we?

Oh goody. Here comes our ride. We have been lucky to have been spotted for rescue in less than 24 hours. Still, it's night. I'm glad we a good choice of quality flares, from handheld spot-locator flares to parachutes for attracting rescuers to the general area. Just as important, or more so, we can communicate using our hand-held VHF, and a lot of nice reflective strips on the outside to will greatly help the ship's spotlight to find us in the waves.

It goes without saying that we hope our raft is well made, but construction is beyond our scope here. Before you find yourself embarking on your life raft journey, talk to raft service people who see the best and worst, keep up with materials and construction technology, and see what makes have to be fixed the most frequently.

Your raft can really only help keep you warm and secure in cold and rugged seas. The best may even give you a third chance if it is damaged. I hope future rafts or secondary craft will promote mobility as well. The rest of survival – the food, the water, first aid, navigation and learning to live with the sea – is up to you and your equipment. A good raft will put you in the mood, however. It'll reassure you, shut down the panic, make your voyage fun! Well, maybe not fun, but it would be a whole lot less fun without it.