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What is Safety & Sea Survival?
Specialist training for managing serious emergencies at sea — and not only for racers.
Safety & Sea Survival is a short specialist course covering what to do when things go seriously wrong offshore: fire, flooding, dismasting, person overboard, abandoning to a liferaft, and staying alive once you are in one.
It is usually delivered over two days, with a classroom component and a practical session in a pool where you inflate and board a liferaft, right an inverted one, and practise huddling and heat conservation while wearing full wet-weather gear. People consistently describe the pool session as harder than they expected, which is the point.
It has a reputation as a racing requirement, because many offshore races mandate it for a proportion of the crew. That reputation does it a disservice. A cruising couple 40 miles offshore has fewer people, less equipment and no rescue fleet nearby — arguably a stronger case for the training than a fully crewed race boat.
A refresher is available and worth taking, because liferaft drills and flare handling decay quickly. If you intend to sail out of sight of land with any regularity, this is among the highest-value few days you can spend.
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