" wrote:

Need some advice on safety equipment for sailing a little offshore. Our
plan is to charter a boat and sail out of New York for about 200 miles than
come back. The idea is to gain some offshore experience but without taking
too much risk.

There will be six of us, three experienced coastal sailors and three
beginners. I have done a little racing offshore (Newport to Bermuda) and
some limited heavy weather sailing but that's it.

The 42' boat will be fairly well equipped with a lifesling, harnesses
etc. but without a few essential items: liferaft, SSB radio, EPIRB, 2nd
VHF. Can we manage without these? We intend to be at sea for only 4-5 days,
so we should have a fairly good idea about the weather but things can
always change.

You can (should) rent a liferaft and an EPIRB. A SSB would be nice
but plenty of people do without. You could buy a hand held VHF in
case you needed the life raft, otherwise the VHF will be of limited
use.

I expect the biggest problem to be seasickness and fatigue among the
beginners. Any advice on managing that?

I'd advise that the beginners go out ordinary sailing for a couple of
trips, or at least one to determine if they need to be worried about
seasickness. Each person is different. I sometimes feel queasy with
tension, but rarely ever get actively motion sick. Bob eats saltines.
He's less stoic about seasickness nowadays so I know that when he eats
saltines he's feeling queasy.

Some of the remedies for seasickness work for some people and some
don't.

grandma Rosalie