DIY dan buoy
Safety kit doesn’t have to cost a lot, as Andrew Poyner shows
It has always seemed to me that, in a MOB emergency, being able to deploy a life ring, dan buoy, drogue and light quickly and easily could be a lifesaver. My system does just that.
The dan buoy is made of an odd bit of rectangular domestic plastic ducting about 11 x 5.5 x 40cm stuffed with expanded polystyrene and capped with bits of ply. The pole is a hollow fibreglass one I bought from a beachside store, about 2.5m long, and would normally have a spinny fish or something similar at the top.
The telescopic sections are epoxied together, a flag fixed to the top, and the whole thing epoxied to the wooden caps in the float. The weight is lead, about 4cm diameter x 4cm high, cast from scrap in a tomato purée tin with a bit of 15mm copper tube in the middle, both held on a wooden base during the casting.
The frame is made of odds and ends of UPVC fascia board, but could easily be ply (though UPVC needs no varnishing!).
The life ring rests on two small ledges and is held in place by the dan buoy which in turn is held in place by a tight double loop of bungy cord. The bight of this pokes through a hole to the inboard side, and has a short dowel (red in the photo) through the loop. The stem of the dan buoy above the float locates in a half circle cutout on a sort of shelf, and the light is fixed under this and out of the way. The drogue lives in a length of domestic plastic waste pipe, and is tied to the lifering as are the dan buoy and light with short lengths of line. None of the dimensions are critical, though the dan buoy should lie flat on the lifering so as to grip it well. In an emergency, you pull the dowel out by its string and the weight of the dan buoy pulls the whole lot over the stern into the sea. When ‘rearming’ the thing, a short piece of line tied to the bungy loop makes poking it back through the hole a lot easier.
Mine seems to work well, though fortunately I have never needed to use it for real.
The cost was about £5 for the pole, and the rest was odds and ends I had lying around.