The RNLI's Head of Public Relations, Edward Wake-Walker, reports from the International Lifeboat Conference in UruguayA hundred or so delegates from 26 different countries gathered in Montevideo, Uruguay, for the 17th International Lifeboat Conference, from 12 to 17 February 1995. Much has happened in the four years since the last world gathering in Oslo. Holland is now widely equipped with fast all-weather rigid inflatable boats; the USA has completed extensive coastal evaluation of her new 47ft lifeboat. The RNLI's Severns and Trents have progressed from the drawing board to reality and France is nearing completion of a 160-vessel replacement programme.

Many, many lives have been saved in those four years but inevitably tragedies have also occurred, among them the Estonia tragedy and the loss of two German lifeboat crew members.

If anyone needs proof that international co-operation between lifeboat societies is worthwhile, they need look no further than an interlude during the Uruguay conference.

At sea in the blue waters off Punta del Este, where the estuary of the River Plate meets the southern Atlantic three men stand in the bows of a lifeboat. She is a 48ft 6in steel Solent class, built in 1972 and now with 'ADES 12' on her stern. The men are Guillermo Perez Lavagnini, president of the Uruguayan Sea Rescue Association (ADES), Brian Miles, Director of the RNLI and Ray Kipling, his deputy. They are in earnest discussion about when the RNLI will be able to offer for sale Waveney class lifeboats, once they begin to be replaced by the 25-knot Trent.

In the meantime the Uruguayans are giving the RNLI delegation a nostalgic trip aboard an earlier purchase, the one-time Montrose lifeboat, Lady McRobert. She, together with another ex-RNLI boat stationed up the Plate at Colonia (a 1956 42ft Watson class, once the Arbroath lifeboat) and two smaller inshore vessels, one up-river from Colonia and one at Montevideo, forms the lifeboat cover for Uruguay.

This first world lifeboat conference to be held in the southern hemisphere opened the eyes of many delegates from the longerestablished societies to the way in which countries with few resources and long, sparsely populated coastlines can still offer a life-saving service.

, _ Uruguay, for example, operates on a meagre annual income of US$ 35,000yet extolled the advantages of a voluntary system at the conference; Chile was another.

They, too, rely entirely upon volunteers and fundraising - and raised eyebrows by announcing that the four boats at Valparaiso were partially funded from theproceeds of a restaurant and casino they run on the quayside.

Disappointment was audible when it was explained that a casino in Chile can merely mean a visitor centre! So how do you provide lifeboat cover if you cannot afford the sophistication of an RNLI Arun class or a German 28m (92ft) rescue cruiser? Second-hand lifeboats are certainly one solution and Chile is the proud operator of two perfectly-preserved RNLI veterans, one of them the 48ft 6in Ramsgate-type which first saw service at Walton and Frinton in 1928. But they combine the reliability of these sedate ladies with the speed of two rigid inflatables, the larger 13m long, capable of 22 knots, water-jet driven and with lines similar to the modern Dutch RHI lifeboats.

West across the South Pacific in New Zealand or east across the Atlantic in South Africa you will find a similar combination of ex-RNLI craft and home-developed modern designs.

The conference showed considerable interest in a South African 5m (16ft), 30-knot rigid inflatable, developed to meet most of their inshore needs at a reasonable price. Many stations launch through heavy breakers and strong onshore winds and the lifeboat has a flooding compartment for water ballast, to provide extra weight forward when punching through surf.

Australia's Volunteer Coastguard Association relies heavily on its members' privately-owned pleasure boats for search and rescue, although their National Commodore, Graham Clarke, explained that some bases had raised funds to obtain boats specifically for life-saving. Their design varied considerably, and was determined by local conditions and preferences.

Three countries from south of the equator, Peru, Venezuela and Argentina were represented at the conference for the first time, undoubtedly encouraged by the South American venue.

The latter two gave comprehensive accounts of their national search and rescue provisions, Venezuela's by the Navy and Argentina's by the Prefecture Naval, similar to the United States' Coast Guard.

The Estonia tragedy The Estonia tragedy of September 1994 over-shadowed the proceedings in the conference hall on the first day. The sinking of the ferry, when 137 people were rescued but 931 were lost, shook the whole world, and none more than three of the countries represented at the conference: Estonia herself, Sweden and Finland. The ship went down virtually equidistant from their coasts.

Finland began with a presentation including a haunting recording of the last distress messages from Estonia, and video footage of the traumatic task of identifying corpses brought ashore served to remind delegates, if they needed reminding, what a serious business they were in.

The Secretary General of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), William O'Neil spoke of its initiative to improve the safety of roll-on, roll-off ferries, and mentioned the need to look at ways of managing water should it accidentally enter the car deck, as the risk of it penetrating bow doors can never be absolutely ruled out.

But this was a lifeboat conference, whose main concern was how more people might have been saved after the accident.

Sadly, hundreds went down with the ship, so quickly did sheroll over, but some 90 people escaped only to drown or die of cold.

No lifeboats were called to the scene, as Estonia sank 50 miles from the nearest shore and rescue co-ordinators considered the conditions and distance too much for those available. The large vessels at the scene experienced the agony of being unable to launch their ship's lifeboats in the atrocious weather, and the lack of small surface vessels to recover people quickly from the water or liferafts was felt by several at the conference to be a significant disadvantage - particularly as the helicopters could only lift people one at a time.

The problem of providing an efficient method of recovering large numbers of people from the water was addressed in a later paper by the US Coast Guard, which has developed an inflatable ramp which can be lowered over a lifeboat's side. However, lifeboats need to be there in the first place Estonia's liferafts caused considerable difficulty. Some survivors in the water could not climb their 3ft freeboard; they frequently capsized in the heavy seas and wind; their underside was painted black and almost invisible from above; and once evacuated they drifted off so there was no way of telling which had already been checked for occupants.

Many lessons can undoubtedly be drawn. Better instruction on evacuation procedures and the correct use of lifejackets, better methods of establishing the exact number of passengers and crew, and better lif eraf t design are just three improvements sought in a resolution passed by the conference.

The resolution, to be presented to IMO, also asks that emergency warning systems such as GMDSS (Global Maritime Distress and Safety System) be reviewed to ensure that shorebased search and rescue units are launched with the minimum delay. Above all, the ILF is wholly supportive of IMO's initiative to improve the safety of Ro-Ro passenger ferries and is keen to lend its members' experience.

Lifeboat capsize Another example of the worst imaginable scenario was recounted by Uwe Klein, director of the German Lifeboat Institution, whose 28m rescue cruiser had capsized on New Year's Day 1995 with the loss of her coxswain and engineer.

The profound effect this story (see News, page 291) had on delegates cannot be overstated, reviving RNLI memories of similar capsizes. The two crew members who survived aboard Alfried Krupp must be grateful for her self-righting ability, and the accident brought home to all delegates that in the worst conditions, even a 28m vessel is vulnerable to the seas.

Uwe Klein felt there were many lessons to be learned from the experience. All ten means of radio communication aboard went dead soon after the capsize, and better fail-safe systems are required; fittings were ripped from their fastenings on impact and became lethal missiles; two wheelhouse windows were shattered and must be made stronger.

Now, two men will always undertake on-deck tasks in bad weather; lifelines will be used at all times; and lifejacket design will be re-examined, as the coxswain's was torn from him.

Future lifejackets may have a personal radio locator beacon fitted.

The common ground occupied by the different lifeboat societies is such that many papers prepared for the conference, and several months before the accident, had a direct bearing upon it. Germany herself addressed a potential design development - sealing the flying bridge. Although originally part of a system to allow a lifeboat to operate in toxic gases, water swamped the upper steering position of Alfried Krupp and the Germans feel the enclosed position might have a dual purpose.

The lifeboat was returning from a search for a Dutch lifeboat crew who had been swept overboard and who was lucky to have been found, thanks to the strobe light on his lifejacket, after spending two-and-a-half hours in the sea.

Holland's presentation to the conference on the possiblevalue of a personal rescue device, designed to calculate its position from a navigation satellite and to transmit a distress signal via a communications satellite, was of great relevance.

However there was a feeling that the problem of false alarms experienced with EPIRBs needed to be ironed out before embarking on a new personal one.

Still with personal safety, the RNLI's paper on the development of its new, less bulky lifejacket for all-weather lifeboats was of particular interest to the Germans in view of their reexamination of lifejacket design.

Holland, too, had a story of capsize to relate. On a February morning in 1993 Terschelling's fast Johannes Frederik class was standing by a cargo ship in darkness, a Force 10 and 50ft seas.

The lifeboat was hit by a sea on her port beam and rolled through 160° before coming back upright. Foot straps and hand-holds kept the crew in position. Heading out to sea to clear an area of heavy ground seas the coxswain found himself confronted by a huge approaching sea; his reflex action was to increase speed to break through the crest but the effect was to throw the bow even more to the vertical and the lifeboat pitchpoled, bow over stern.

She righted herself, the crew were unharmed and the engines re-started, although there was some damage to antennae and the flying bridge windshield. This experience has helped to increase Dutch confidence in the all-weather capabilities of this 36-knot, 14m (46ft) rigid inflatable.

Visibility for the man at the helm in heavy seas was another topic for discussion, still closely related to the subject of capsize.

It is one of the reasons many modern lifeboats are built with a flying bridge, but a series of accidents in Australia and New Zealand, where vessels have broached and subsequently been capsized by a following sea, have given food for thought to the Royal New Zealand Coastguard Federation.

Lew Robinson, their delegate, found a droll way to make a serious point about a seated helmsman's restricted vision astern.

To prove his assertion of a 60° blind spot aft when sitting at the wheel he carried out an ingenious antipodean demonstration.

An outsized bush hat placed on the head of a fellow countryman had an unconventional rim - able to record in degrees the point at which a New Zealander could recognise a randomlydrawn card as his colleague brought it stealthily into view from behind. Substitute a 10m breaking sea for the ten of spades and you realise Lew Robinson was not playing his joker just for fun.

The Association for Rescue at Sea, an American organisation which supports sea rescue initiatives in different parts of the world, sponsored a paper on basic seamanship and modern lifeboat technology. Hamish McDonald trains operators of fast rescue craft, and pointed out that sophisticated lifeboats will never compensate for a lack of basic seamanship and a profound understanding of the sea. He argues that there is no such thing as an all-weather vessel, however large or advanced, it is only as invulnerable as its skipper allows it to be..