Captain Ron's

Sailing and Cruising Pages

What's in Your Ditch Bag?

By Captain Ron

I'm not going to attempt to give you the ultimate inventory for a ditch bag, but what I will do is tell you what's in Kismet's ditch bag just to get you thinking about what you might want to put in yours. I'd also appreciate email from you with your ideas for stuff I might want to add to ours. I'm quite sure we haven't thought of everything.

First of all, a ditch bag is a container that you grab just as you step off the masthead into your life raft. It's supposed to contain those emergency supplies that would help get you rescued and those items that will help you survive until help arrives. I mean abandoning ship is the last thing I want to do on a cruise but if a disaster happens, I'd like to be at least partly prepared. Also keep in mind that our ditch bag is intended for a relatively short duration scenario. Our cruising plans seldom take us far from land so hopefully we'd be rescued within 24 hours ... optimism rules. If you're planning to cross an ocean, different rules apply and you'd better consult an expert.

Some items in the ditch bag are permanent residents. That is, we store these items in the bag all the time. Other items will be added at the last minute assuming we're still thinking clearly enough to include them. Some items permanently stored there are strictly survival or emergency items while most of the last minute items are things we use all the time but want to be sure we take with us in an emergency. Just because we permanently store items in the bag doesn't mean that we need to be in a ditching situation before we can use them. There may be distress situations that don't require abandoning ship where some of these things might be used. It's also possible to use things in the bag every day ... just be sure to replace them as you use them.

And now a few words about the bag itself. Our bag is a heavy duty, yellow, waterproof, duffel bag that measures maybe 24 inches long by about 12 or 14 inches in diameter. We picked it up on sale at a sporting goods store that sold kayaks. It has sturdy handles and an easily removable shoulder strap. The main opening is zippered with a Velcro flap ... maybe not as water tight as I would like, but ok. It happens that this bag fits nicely on the floor of the nav station which is right near the main hatch.

Permanent Residents

EPIRB - Our 406mhz EPIRB lives in the ditch bag rather than mounted to a bracket in the boat. If we ever need to activate it we'll know where it is, besides which, if we need it we're soon going to need the ditch bag anyway. We have been careful to keep it registered and licensed and the battery is current. It does not have a GPS interface however, since it is several years old.

Space blankets - We don't expect to use these but in a ditching situation they'll be needed. They don't take up much room or weight in the bag so including several is not a problem

First Aid Kit. - This is a dedicated emergency First Aid Kit in its own waterproof container.

Sun Screen - A large tube of our favorite stuff. Our dermatologist recommends Ocean Potion ... we buy the highest SPF available

Spare Binoculars - We leave our old waterproof ones in the bag.

Sound Signaling Devices - We have an assortment of loud whistles and a small air horn in the bag.

Fishing Gear - We have a small assortment of hooks, line (on a Cuban reel), and lures ... probably represents wishful thinking more than reality especially given my success rate.

Visual Signals - Some of these might be useful only in daylight while others are day/night devices. We have one of those plastic banners, a signaling mirror and a smoke bomb stored in the bag along with a flare kit that includes a bunch of cartridges for the flare gun and a few aerial flares including a couple of big parachute type flares. We also have a couple of small strobe lights of the type often attached to life jackets ... with spare batteries.

Tools - Our bag includes a good rigging knife and a quality stainless steel multi-tool ... I think ours is a Gerber fwiw... we also have a quality flashlight with spare batteries.

Magnetic Compass - A small Boy Scout type pathfinder compass ...

Inflatable patch kit - since we don't carry a life raft, we would have to abandon ship into our inflatable dinghy. The kit includes enough stuff to repair a decent assortment of holes. We also include here a small tube of Fast Cure 5200.

Water - We have 6 12oz bottles of water in the bag ... usually ... we try to rotate them to keep the ones in the bag reasonably fresh ... probably should have more but the bag is heavy enough already. One liter per person per day is considered survival rations. By the way, you can drink sea water. Contrary to conventional wisdom, sea water ingested in small quantities and totaling no more than 32 oz per 24 hour period will keep you alive. This is assuming that you're otherwise healthy. People have survived more than 60 days at sea with no other water. Too much sea water will cause kidney failure however.

Zip Lock Bags - I've included few large zip locks ... you never know when you want to keep something dry or fresh or maybe just separate from everything else. McGiver could probably use one to make a solar still.

Parachute cord - I keep a 50ft coil of parachute cord ... just a left over thought from my Boy Scout days I suppose, but it might be useful.

Sea Anchor - Complete with bridle and line.

Some-Time Residents

Spare GPS - We consider the ditch bag to be the home for our old trusty Garmin GPS 48 although it mostly sits on the nav station where we have it interfaced to the computer. We'll need to remember to grab it on our way off the boat. We also have spare batteries for it permanently stored in the bag.

Handheld VHF - Our handheld VHF is often in the dinghy so it's another item we'll have to remember to grab on the way out but we permanently keep a spare set of alkaline batteries for it loaded in it's magazine and another set of batteries ... both stored in zip lock baggies permanently in the ditch bag.

Grab it on the way off Stuff

Ship's Papers - I include here all of our various licenses and certificates as well. Since we keep all of that boat related stuff in a zippered 3 ring binder it'll be easy to get everything at once. This binder also contains our passports and recent customs/immigration documents.

Wallets & Cash- All of our remaining ID cards, credit cards, etc. plus there's no point in letting cash go down with the boat.

Charts - The plan is to grab the paper charts for the area we're in ... this may be easier said than done especially in the dark.

Medicines - We don't have any prescription medications (yet) so this only includes over-the-counter pain meds, sea sickness pills, antibiotics, allergy pills, etc. Again this may be asking too much of last minute prep. A small permanent selection might be better.

Water - Any water stored in bottles that's handy enough to grab, goes over with us.

Food - Whatever seems to make sense at the time... although eating requires water for digestion so water is more important for short term survival.

Machete - While we don't carry any weapons on board, I do have a rather large stainless steel machete that while I don't plan to need a weapon, it might be useful if we have to trek across country to find civilization or build a shelter.

Bug Spray - self-explanatory

Clothing - Whatever seems to make sense at the time.

Gas - The spare gas cans off the deck ... assuming there's gas in them.

Well that's what our ditch bag has in it. Like I said I'm sure we don't have everything but you have to figure that being somewhat prepared is better than nothing. Consider all the battery powered stuff ... there must be a couple of dozen batteries in the bag... which reminds me that it's time to rotate that supply with our regular spare battery cache. That's a lot of weight in the bag just from batteries.

Here's hoping we never have to use it.