Plan B- The Life Raft

I am in the middle of reading the Voyagers Handbook, which is a 500 page guide to everything one needs to know about getting you and your boat ready for a cruise around the world. While, Jenny and I aren't planning a trip around the world, our cruise is going to cover approximately 10,000 miles (I used Google Earth to check the math). The book is VERY DENSE and full of good information, much of which is above my current sailing knowledge. I am studying hard to understand all the concepts, but the books gives good high level examples, while providing diagrams and charts full of specs and whatnot. It's not exactly light fun reading, but I am definitely growing my knowledge from this book. Plus it's a great book to reference in the future when we are going to be looking at equipping our boat for our voyage.
Anyways, I came to the chapter about life rafts and thought the subject deserved a blog entry!

In preparation for our voyage we want to strike a balance between being TOTALLY responsible and safe while keeping our bank account floating above zero.

One such areas where we have to strike a balance is our plan if we are out at sea and our sailboat sinks.

The Voyagers Handbook advocates a broad spectrum of options in terms of emergency vehicles in the case that your sailboat is sinking. The most basic form of a liferaft is using the sailboat's dinghy. Dinghys are the small boats that you use to get to shore when the sailboat is at anchor. The most advanced would be expensive self inflating liferafts that can hold 6 people.

Dinghy:

Expensive Ocean Rated Survival Raft:

While we plan on NOT sinking, we also plan on having a plan B. At this current moment we are considering a less expensive self inflating life raft meant for coastal cruising. Life rafts that are designed for coastal cruising boats are not as burly as the ocean rated raft above, but serves the same purpose and it significantly cheaper.

We haven't settled on a model yet, but this one is a possibility. For $1000, the peace of mind knowing that you have a plan b is a small price to pay.