As part of the on-shore component, we’ve been learning about procedures on the ship including how to chart a course, how to set/strike different sails, and about the watch schedule. A lot of this information has been shared in the form of readings, but when it came to safety procedures and how to properly operate safety gear, we had the privilege of a hands-on introduction to this.
We learned about and got to use three different pieces of safety equipment: lifejackets, exposure suits (also called gumby suits), and a life raft.
Lifejackets were fairly straightforward - they were your average square, not-so-flattering bright orange pieces of foam that kept us afloat. Something cool we did was learn how to move around in these as a group since it’s safer to travel in a group than going alone.
There were also other neat ways we could group up, like sitting in a circle to stay (relatively) warmer or floating next to each other on our backs to form a “human raft.” Unfortunately, I don’t have photos of those, but I imagine it would’ve looked pretty interesting.
Gumby suits were honestly my favorite part of the whole thing. They were kind of like one-size-fits-all (read: absolutely massive) bright red wetsuits.
To my surprise, they kept me mostly dry, despite splashing around in the pool for awhile. Similar to the stuff we learned to do with the life vests, we also learned how to move around in a group with these suits.
Finally, the life raft. From an engineering standpoint, these things were really neat, it feels like the designers thought of everything! There were lines on the sides to make it easy to hold on to if we were in the water, there’s a CO2 canister that would auto-inflate the raft in an emergency, it was designed to be easy to get in from the water, and there were lines on the bottom that made the raft flippable in case it somehow was deployed upside-down. The only thing that was less-than-ideal was if you were the person flipping the raft, you would end up under the raft momentarily, but I suppose it’s a fair trade-off considering all the other features and the relatively low likelihood of the raft somehow ending up upside-down.
And of course, who can forget about cleanup?
