Lifeboat Efficiency Certificate

[J Gowers]

Freefall life boats fitted to many drilling rigs as well as ships. You sit in airline type seats facing the back of the boat you are strapped in with a fourpoint harness and a head strap the pin is pulled out and away you go the angle is designed that when they hit the water they go under and when they come up the momentum propells them away from the ship. There was a training course for them at Dundee. I never did that course as no rigs/ships I was on had them fitted but I did a lifeboat course there many years ago and they showed us a video taken inside the boat as it was launched, looked very scary.

[John Arton]

These days all lifeboats are completely enclosed and are launched either by the free fall method as described in a previous post or by gravity davit launch. Schatt davits is just the trade name of the gravity davit design. In that system tricing pennants securing the lifeboat in its stowed position are removed and the boat is lowered to embarkation level by lifting the brake handle to allow the davit arms to roll down the davit trackway, it's speed of descent being controlled by a gravity brake where the brake drum rotates at a speed that causes the brake pads outwards and press against the brake drum thus controlling the speed of descent. Once the davit arms reach the end of the trackway the lifeboat will be hanging outboard of the ships hull. Browsing in tackles are then rigged to haul the boat in tight alongside the embarkation deck to allow the occupants to board and the remaining crew members will slacken off the browsing in tackles to allow the boat to swing free of the ships side and release the tackles. The gravity brake handle is then lifted and the boat lowered to the water where in an enclosed lifeboat the falls automatically release due to an onload mechanism ( it is this onload mechanism that causes most accidents having being incorrectly engaged the last time the boat was exercised). The last crew member then goes down the lifeboat boarding ladder ( usually situated either between the davit arms and deployed prior to launch or just ast of the davits) boards the boat, the permanently rigged forward painter is released from inside the boat and off you go.
If some think I am trying to tell granny how to suck eggs with the above description, then I apologise.
Rgds
J.A

[john walker]

Various posters have mentioned free fall davits and gravity davits for launching lifeboats, nobody has mentioned the davits that appeared to have the lifeboat inboard of them. They were fitted on most of the ships that I sailed on which were built built in the 50s. It was hard work launching the lifeboat and a darn sight harder winding it back on board.

[Keith Tindell]

If you mean the old radial davits , where one end of the boat was swung through to outboard first, then followed by the other end. I only sailed on two ships in the 60s with those, but took teamwork, and the biggest problem was lowering nice and level and even. Then came the big job of disengaging the falls together, and if the ship was underway, very dangerous. I have read a number of accounts of the wartime when a ship was underway and abandoning, and many men wee lost at that stage, a sea running and trying to disengage the falls.

[J Gowers]

All the lifeboats I saw in 30 years of working on rigs were totally enclosed and could be launched from inside the boat using a wire connencted to the davit on landing on the water ( as John above mentions) there is a hydrostatic release which frees the boat from the fall hooks automatically. They also had a water cooling spray arrangement and a compressed air cylinder for going through smoke or flames all had two methodes of starting either battery or hand crank and a VHF radio. We had weekly boat drills and some Captains/OIMs insistead we got in the boat at boat drills, 50 guys in a lifeboat it was pretty cramped, mind you they are only intended to get a few miles away from the rig not to go on ocean voyages, if I remember right we only had fuel onboard for 12 hours steaming and no sails but a few oars. The hardest thing I remember about them was if they were launched for maintenance purposes was that they were a bugger to get back on the fall hooks to get winched back to the rig. The winching was done using an electric motor on the davit and were only hand winched for the last few inches.

Modern lifeboats are very different beasts from the open lifeboats I saw in my early days in the MN.

[j.sabourn]

#33 someone has already mentioned John , they are the old radial davits , which I think today would be a museum article just about. The originals launching and recovery by Norwegian steam. The attitude with the. Recovery of lifeboats left much to be desired as the general consensus of opinion was that they were launched only as a last resort. And would have nowhere to go back to . For other emergency’s such as MOB the shipowner with any foresight provided a smaller boat such as a whaler or even dinghy , or took the attitude if you were stupid enough to go over the wall you should have learned to swim better. Cheers JS ..

[Ivan Cloherty]

The old Radial Davit System is still alive and well and still in use today, but not on lifeboats, but on heavy lift ships where-in cargo loaded is longer than the space between two crane's pedestals which are normally offset on one side of the vessel (to leave a clear deck), has to be swung to the offside of the deck from the shore and vice versa. This is used on pieces of long equipment of weights up to 2000 tonnes plus. These ships are always berthed with the cranes adjacent to the quay for stability and outreach purposes, so long cargo has to be swung twixt the pedestals and both crane operators working like a well drilled lifeboat crew.

[j.sabourn]

Bet not wearing. Safety. Boots is a sackable offence there then Ivan. Gone the old flip flops !!!
JS

[Michael Black]

#37, Ivan, done the same thing with mobile cranes a few times. As you say the crane operator's need to be watching their weight indicators very carefully as they work in tandem. 2 good drivers can make a difficult task look very easy.
Regards Michael

[Bill Morrison]

Tandem lifts, with mobile cranes. I posted this before.
Bill.