Following the 1998 SydneyHobart Race some leisure liferafts showed marked deficiencies in sea survival situations.

The ORC established a working party to address the problem and in January 2003 their new Liferaft Standard revision comes into force. Since the ORC has been amalgamated with the International Sailing Federation (ISAF), the new regulations will also be the ISAF standard.

Alan Green, chairman of the ISAF Liferaft Committee, explained they waited for the Australian coroner's report before completing their research into the new regulations.

However, they wanted to move quickly to get something done about revising their existing liferaft specifications.

"The ISO standard has been in draft form for more than 10 years, " said Green. "In the absence of a delivery date for a new ISO standard we decided to revise the ORC standard which has been in existence for over 20 years."

Initially this standard was only a fairly generalised protem set of requirements, he said, in anticipation that the ISO standard would emerge before long. "But of course it never did."

Unlike commercial liferafts, which are governed by SOLAS regulations, there is no comparable international standard for leisure liferafts.

Following publication of the new ISAF standard it is hoped the ISO committee will be spurred into action. When there is a new ISO standard, UK manufacturers will be able to sell their products abroad more easily and won't have to negotiate all the different specifications from different countries.

You get what you pay for Having an international standard should also make things a great deal safer for the buying public.

Traditionally, liferafts are one of those things that most people are reluctant to spend money on. But if you spend any time inside a liferaft, your point of view will be guaranteed to change dramatically.

Different models vary enormously in their construction, comfort and performance at sea, because the regulations deal more with the design of the raft rather than detailing the construction and build quality.

The commercial result of this is that rafts are built to a price, as Andy Bottriell of Viking Life-Saving Equipment explained.

"We were shocked at the London Boat Show this year, " he said. "People would just walk up to the stand and say 'what's your cheapest price'.

We 'd say £899 and they'd say 'well they've got one down there for £499'. Our answer was that if you value your life then an extra £400 isn't a bad investment."

Getting the ISO standard approved will not be easy.

"European rules are fraught with authorities still doing their own thing, " said Barry Durant, general manager of Viking. "Commercial areas have strict rules but there remain grey areas in the leisure sector. Commercial rafts are built to a standard, but in the leisure world there are a lot of rafts where that would not necessarily be the case."

In the absence of anybody else doing anything, the ORC has also decided to take action on a second front.

"In a year's time we want independent certification to say all the liferafts under an ISAF standard have been independently quality controlled in their manufacture. At the moment that's another potential failure point in the product."

Green added: "Neither the ORC nor the ISAF ever intended to get into the standardisation business. We would be more than happy for a good ISO standard albeit that it might not be precisely the same as ours."

ISO has the framework and support with the EC to properly maintain an International Standard whereas ISAF doesn't, he said.