GL: Life Sling (was: Jack Lines and Tethers)

[Kevin Redden]

-----Original Message-----
> I have not seen?any ?comments on the use of the "Life sling" product that
> can be deployed and with a long enough line you can circle the person in 
> the water with the boat?so the person in the water? can retrieve the horse
> shoe life ring. 

I've found that in actual use, the Life Sling is a very slow way to recover
an MOB (assuming the victim is still alive and floating by the time the Life
Sling finally gets to him). While the Life Sling directions make the job of
circling to get the flotation to the MOB sound easy, in practice, the rope
and the device usually ends up running a slightly smaller circle than the
boat does, but still far away from the grasp of the MOB.

I've found it to be FAR faster to just do a hard turn and come back
alongside the MOB. In twenty seconds I can be back to the MOB giving him
flotation alongside the boat, where using the Life Sling would take several
minutes to get the flotation to the MOB.

After real on the water testing demonstrated just how slow the Life Sling
system is, I sold mine, and now just come directly back around to the MOB -
it is far faster.

There is no substitute for actually doing MOB drills. You really need to
practice this several times a year, and you need to be able to get the boat
back next to the MOB, without getting the victim into the props. 

Kevin

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12:27 PM