Abandonship Bag

[ebb]

Have a tendency of hijacking threads with a lot of verbosity. c amos just posted in the Gallery on the 'Faith' channel a picture and source of a real nice soft organizer that he has by the companionway.

Abandonship bags are another topic, but I think an important and interesting one. A guy named Doug Ritter has a one man extreme equipment/gear review and testing site at
www.equipped.com

Which bag and what you put in the that bag is a great subject. The bags are way at the other end of the spectrum moneywise.

It's a treasure of other info.
What do you think???

[mbd]

Interesting timing you've got Ebb. Last time I was rereading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and you alluded to Mr. Adams and his restaurant at the end of the universe in a thread. (BTW, I've been tossing about new boat names and "42" made the list whilst reading the book, though, I'm pretty sure we've settled on something else at this point.)

Then, this weekend, I picked up Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan. Good read.

So far I've been struck by a few items:
The immediacy in which the sinking happened meant he was unable to retrieve his survival suit from the forepeak area of his boat, among other things. Ready availability of survival gear and a well-planned ditch routine would be a must for cruisers, I think. To make water, he used a Solar Still (http://travel.howstuffworks.com/survival1.htm). Neat stuff. And here's a wild one - his survival book mentions that you can absorb unclean water through an enema? Never heard that one before, but it beats dying of thirst if it'd work. :o

Talk about hijacking a thread, eh? :D

[ebb]

Ho Ho holy catfish Mike - OK let's put an enema bottle on the long list - down at the bottom. Would be good to know if ocean water would work if introduced into the system by that method? Maybe a length of surgical tubing would have a multiuse factor that would include it in the Bag?

Gotta get Callahan's book. Survival at sea isn't the usual romantic subject one dwells on. Especially sunsets! His survival suit could have been in a cockpit locker. Hard to think about it.

Got to put one or two hand powered water makers in the Bag - THAT'S FOR SURE. And a couple collapsible water containers.

[commanderpete]

He has a list of gear if you click on the link at the bottom of this page

http://www.equipped.com/abndonship.htm

Hard to say when the gear becomes excessive. The following is included:

"Inspirational Material

Many survivors rely on their religious or spiritual beliefs for support during a survival ordeal. If you are so inclined, it may be beneficial to include religious or inspirational materials in your survival kit - a Bible, Koran, collection of inspirational poems or passages, or whatever is appropriate to your beliefs. These are readily available in reduced size versions at religious and spiritual supply stores. The magnifying lens discussed above could be useful when reading the teensy weensy fine print in some of these small books, however."



How about a book "Chicken Soup for the Cannibal Soul?"

[ebb]

Imagine
a shrink-wrapped solar powered Macintosh mini-laptop called
The CrabApple,
of course, that will have all manner of good things in it like:

how to [Part A, Practical]* deploy your inflatable liferaft while fending off sharks,
survival menu planning,
confined space exercises,
non-verbal centerfold inspirations,
island naming,
and e-mail.

__________________________________________________ _____________________________________________
*[Part B, Inspirational] When sharks begin circling what _____________ would say.
(fill in blank space with your choice of Budha, Mohammed, Jesus, L.Ron Hubbard, Slocum - or any combination.)

[Didereaux]

I was given a USN Seal sniper bag and had occasion to use it as a ditch bag last year. They are about 4ft long, inflatable(about a foot in diameter). I placed my personal ID, camera, emergency stuff like compass etc into it, inflated it. Half full it still could support me. So with it and a lifevest I was pretty much 'unswampable and certainly unsinkable.

The bag was a 'second' and sold in some used military store or another up in the Virginia area.

If you have occasion to find one, I heartily recommend buying it. Hopefully you never have need of it, but if not, being absolutely water tight it makes a perfect stoeage bag for sensitive stuff like electronics.

g'Luk