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Aboard ship one always hopes they never need to take a sleigh ride into an unfriendly sea but Ship Happens. When it does you’re going to be very pleased the guys at Petrofac and SurvivalTech are running boats through extensive tests. The following is video of their facility and a few design drawings from lifeboat engineers.

Image Source: HSE.gov.uk

Eide Marine Tech brings us a new Freefall lifeboat design. In a press release they write:

The lifeboat has a new superstructure design in order to get the water off the superstructure faster than earlier designed freefall lifeboats. And together with the bow, which EMT has used for several years, this will make the entry to the water quite soft.

The lifeboat was designed for use with their innovative freefall davit design. Rather than attempting to describbe the system, here is a drawing that should make the system’s advantages over a traditional free fall system obvious.

If you have any experience with these davits please post a comment with your thoughts.

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Here’s the arial view;

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Finally, here’s how they test these boats:

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For more info on the history behind these types of lifeboats visit NOVA’s “Pioneers of Survival - An Interview with Martin Verhoef“.