Although its rare, cruising boats are occasionally lost due to damage from storms, collision, fire, or structural failure. When this happens, the crew has no choice but to abandon ship. For a well prepared cruiser, it should be fairy simple to deploy the life raft, load the "abandon ship bag", actuate the EPIRB, and safely abandon the vessel. What happens next is the important question. In the sales literature, your 406 EPIRB, alerts the Coast Guard, a rescue helicopter is launched, and your picked up within hours. What the salesmen don’t mention is that Murphy’s Law states that "something will always go wrong, and it always goes wrong at the worst possible time". What this means is that your life raft may not inflate, your EPIRB may fail, weather conditions may delay rescue, or the nearest land is a 3 rd. world country in the midst of a revolution. All cruisers carry a variety of spare parts and most will have a backup ready for really critical functions. The decision to abandon a vessel and implement the Abandon Ship Plan is one of the most important choices a skipper will ever make. It makes good sense to evaluate your Abandon Ship Plan periodically and consider adding a backup capability that will increase your probability of survival.

Self reliance is a basic part of ocean cruising. If you abandon ship and no one comes to your rescue, what do you do next? Are you going to drift around aimlessly until you wash ashore somewhere, or will you take a proactive position and rescue yourself. With some careful planning and a few modifications to your existing rigid dinghy you can develop an abandon ship plan that includes self rescue capability. I define this as "The ability to navigate towards a chosen destination, with reasonable comfort and safety, for a minimum of 30 days, independent of outside help, rain fall, or supplementary food sources."