Raft Safety in Whitewater Rafting

Video Transcript

"This is how we outfit the raft so that you’re protected while you’re out there rafting as a guide. We have our first aid kit strapped to the floor out of the way or the loose ends of the loose ends of the strapping are out of your way so they’re not going to wrap around your legs while you’re out there rafting. You want to make sure that you’re not ever going to be trapped in the boat. There’s a spare pump always a good idea when you’re going downstream in an inflatable device. This thing here will add a little air to the boat if you have a hole, or if you open up one of the valves. This is your throw rope, it’s nicely put together, out of the way, its attached with a locking carabiner here. So this carabiner here, the gate locks closed, so it can’t open un-intentionally, if you had an open gate carabiner or non-locking carabiner such as this. This is inside the boat and you are rafting in a pretty tough class two, three or more, with this attached to your boat or to you. You can easily get entrapped in the boat, on the chicken line as you’re going out of the boat, this thing here can easily catch here and hold you trapped, connected to the raft so you’re looking to avoid that and one of the ways to do that is to spend the extra money and get the locking carabiner. Keep yourself safe, keep all your gear here. So your bailing bucket, also attached with a locking carabiner out of the way, off to one side. If you guide on the right hand side, you want the bailing bucket on the left so that it’s out of your way. With a bailing boat, obviously this is very important, the more buckets you have or the bigger the size buckets you have the quicker you can get the water out of your boat and the quicker you can continue on downstream. Also a fun thing to throw water at one another if you’re out there having some fun with your friends and family. Also carry a flip line; rafts are pretty hard to flip over unintentionally, but once you do flip a raft you want to be able to flip it back over and so you can use a flip line to do that. You connect it to the chicken line, or to one of the d-rings and then you can flip the raft back over, this gives you a little more leverage to do that on your own. "