The lifeboats mod spaw LB in two ways:
1. When the ships achieve certain depth, normally this will only happens on serious flooded ships (for each side independently), it will sink
PROBABLY sometime later. (but not always it will really sink)
2. Associated to the debris when ship is sinking
(The first way idea is just to add a bit of uncertainty for the lifeboats spaw behaviour and it was the big challenge - to make it work well -when I was making the mod)
Now, the ships in Sh3, after a lot of hours, really can fix itselfs, I like the idea, its realistic IMHO.