While you’re still planning for the coming cruising season, think about the rescue equipment you have on board. Is it up to date? Could you put your hands on it in a real emergency, particularly at night? Or is this just something you’d rather not think about.
Well, as the old saying goes, prepare for the worst, plan for the best. This is particularly true for anyone thinking about cruising offshore, or in any major body of water (Lake Michigan immediately comes to mind here).
Now there’s some good news from ACR, which just introduced two new rescue kits, making it easy for you to have everything you would need in a real emergency all on one place. These are true turn-key, no-brainer solutions to keeping your crew safe in a worst-case scenario.
Each kit has the visual, auditory and high-tech technology that will help rescuers find you in an emergency, including a global EPIRB and ACR’s new electronic distress flare (which the Coast Guard has approved if you don’t want to carry the more dangerous, and hard to use, pyrotechnic flares).
ACR calls the basic kit a ResQKit, and it has a Category 2 EPIRB, the electronic distress flare, a distress flag, a strobe rescue light, a mirror, a whistle, a survivor light that attaches to a life jacket (it activates automatically when it comes in contact with water and then flashes for more than 20 hours), and a RapidDitch Express bag that can float with up to 15 pounds of gear.
The second ACR kit is the ResQKit Pro (pictured above),, and it has the EPIRB plus a Personal Locator Beacon, the electronic distress flare, distress flag, a water-activated strobe light visible for three miles, a mirror, whistle, survivor light and the bag.
The basic ResQKit costs $615.95; the Pro version is $869.95. Read more:
