A person should be prepared for any situations, especially if he often travels by sea. Knowing the rules of behavior on the high seas, you can increase your chances of escape during the crash.
Life is an unpredictable thing, and you need to be prepared for any situation. Films in which people find themselves on the high seas because of the wreck of a ship or aircraft are, of course, interesting, but they do not give really useful advice on how one can survive in such a situation. We will try to correct this defect.
What is most important for survival?
The first thing to take care of is your own peace of mind. Experienced travelers and doctors claim that people in the open sea more often died not because of a lack of food, but because of the fear that pushed them to make mistakes. This was confirmed by experiments, so, Alain Bombar could swim across the ocean (Atlantic from Canar to Barbados) initially without food and water. In an extreme situation, you should take yourself in hand and concentrate on the goal - to survive.
There are rules that are useful to adhere to during an extreme journey and the expectation of salvation.
- It is necessary to work out for ourselves a daily routine that is important to observe daily, so that there is no time to be sad.
- If there is a possibility, then keep a diary and write down everything that happens around, your thoughts, and still make plans for the future.
- Do business: catch fish, collect seaweed, come up with how to improve everyday life from improvised objects and peer into the ground. There should not be a single free minute for extraneous thoughts.
- If you move on a swimming device, then do not forget about physical exertion - do at least simple exercises.
- Keep track of your health: the amount of urine, stool and overall physical condition.
How to stay on the water?
Of great importance for survival is the saving of energy that people spend during excessive activity. If a person is in the water, then you need to try to move as little as possible. Ideally, you should find a floating object for which you can hook. It's great if it's a boat, raft or other swimming equipment.
If luck is bypassed, and no floating object is near, then it is important to know the following rules:
- During the calm it is recommended to swim on the back. The body should stay on the surface of the water, and the head should be above its level. Move around until you come across a floating object.
- If the sea waves, then swim better on your stomach, that's just not worth fighting with the current, because it's useless. Hold your breath for as long as possible. To draw air, raise your head and inhale, and exhale underwater.
What can you drink and how to get fresh water?
Without water, a person can not last too long, so it is important to know about the ways of obtaining it:
- Drinking sea water in large quantities is dangerous because it contains a lot of sodium chloride and this can cause death from nephritis. By experiments it was established that for five days you can drink 800 g per day. Sometimes seawater causes indigestion and vomiting.
- An obvious, but unreliable source of fresh water is rain, so it is important to have at hand any capacity in which it will be possible to collect rainfall. If there are no jars next to them, use a bag and even a piece of plastic that can be bent.
- It is important to inspect the swimming device, maybe there is a place on it where the condensate forms itself, for example, on the bottom. It must be carefully collected with a sponge or cloth.
- Many do not know that fresh water can be obtained from fish, since 50-80% of its weight is in liquid. You can make incisions on the back, as when collecting pine resin, and water is in the eyes of fish.
- You can get fresh water by using a distiller. To produce it, you need two containers of different sizes and a waterproof material, for example, a bag. In a large container it is necessary to collect water from the sea and put a smaller capacity in it. The package should be pulled on the edges of a large vessel, securing it. In the center should put a small load to the package sags. It will work like this: the water will begin to evaporate and settle on the film, and the drops will collect in the center under the load and fall into a small container.
Where to get food to survive?
With this question all is more or less understandable, since there are a lot of fish in the sea that you need to catch to catch. The fishing rod is easy to make from improvised materials: it is possible to use ropes, threads, obtained from clothes, ornaments, sticks and so on. If fishing is unsuccessful, then to maintain strength you can eat plankton and algae. Yes it is not tasty, but there is no choice. To collect food you need to take a piece of cloth, make it something like a net and catch potential food. You can eat anything that is fresh and not poisonous.
How to deal with dangerous situations?
If a person could find a swimming means, food and water for themselves, this does not mean that one should relax, because there are many dangers in the sea:
- If the weather has deteriorated and the storm is approaching, it is important to take care of the stability of the raft, for which all heavy things need to be shifted to the center of the ship. In the middle, people should also sit down, so that the waves do not turn over the swimming device.
- Be sure to protect yourself from hot and dangerous ultraviolet rays. In addition, the sun reflects off the surface of the water and can damage your eyesight, so do not look at the sea constantly.
- Beware of fish with needles and spines, because in most cases they are life-threatening. Do not seek to pull a big fish - this can cause the boat to overturn.
How to properly search for land?
If there is a shipwreck, then it is better not to try to sail somewhere, since the rescue operation will be conducted first of all in the crash site. In another situation, if you do not have navigational aids at hand, and there is no knowledge of the location of the stars, and other ways of orienting on the water, then the secrets will come in handy: clouds gather over the earth, and during a thunderstorm lightning strikes it, and even closer to the land birds begin to appear more often.
Useful tips for survival in the open sea
There are several general tips that will be useful for survival:
- If you are in a boat or on a raft, try to pick up everything that will be around.
- In the presence of trauma, do everything, if only the blood does not fall into the sea, as it attracts predators. When attacking sharks, they can be frightened off by blowing the oars into the head.
- During a strong wind, it is recommended to tie a floating anchor to the stern of the vessel, or two at a time. Thanks to this, the ship will meet the waves with its nose, not sideways, which would increase the risk of its revolution.
- Before going to bed, it is better to tie yourself to the swimming device, which is especially important in bad weather, as it will save you from falling into the water.
- If the ship appeared within sight, you need to do everything possible to become visible. If there is no signal rocket, then you can use a mirror or any other reflective surface that you can catch the sun.
Do not panic, believe in yourself and your strength, and then the chances of survival will be very high.