Picture the scene: you’re deep sea fishing with a few mates. You’re miles from land, away from the shipping lanes and the inevitably named ‘Dave’ decides to cook up a storm of instant noodles to counteract the beer he was drinking. Being Dave, he gets distracted, the stove goes over setting the craft alight. One thing leads to another and you find yourself needing to abandon ship. What do you do next?

Accidents happen. Let’s face it, at one point or another you’re likely to be caught out in weather that is rougher than is comfortable, engine failure can strike, someone can slip over the side and so on. But whilst I’m not looking to put anybody off boating, it must be respected that the sea is not always the most hospitable of places and nasty situations inevitably crop up from time to time. I myself have been a man overboard, have suffered engine failure and have once been seconds away from abandoning ship. What all these situations had in common is that the leisurely pace of boating suddenly went into overdrive and panic will try to take over. Knowing what to do in these situations is a good thing, but having had real training through simulated experiences is even better - and that is part of the beauty of the one day RYA Sea Survival course. But is this course really relevant to us typical leisure boaters? I was invited along to the Southampton Water Activities Centre (SWAC) to do the course and see for myself.

Cold water havoc

Strolling into the classroom on a Sunday morning, I was sat down bleary eyed and handed a coffee. Some brief introductions were made and it was explained there would be a classroom session, a trip to the swimming pool and a second classroom session afterwards. Plunged into darkness, a video was played that, instructor Steve assures us, is still the most relevant video to the course – despite the fact it is fast approaching twenty years old and was oddly reminiscent of the ‘Hi-de-Hi’ era.

The start of the course and the content of the first video had quite a big focus on hypothermia and cold water shock. To demonstrate just how incapacitating cold water immersion can be, the smiling bald figure of Duncan Goodhew (British Olympic Gold Medal swimmer) was unceremoniously lowered into a tank of cold water so we could watch the effects in a simulated environment, and just how quickly he went from nominal to shaking uncontrollably...

For the full feature/review of the RYA Sea Survival course, pick up the October issue of Sports Boat and RIB, out from the 15^th September.

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