thanks for the insight, it makes sense, it's just unfortunate that the devs were lazy with that particular module.
BTW, this never happened before as I usually point the bow directly at the shore (hence the expectation of the collision sound). This time however, I paralleled the shore with the intent of a quick exit so there may be a correlation there. Also the raft has always (so far) appeared on the starboard bow, ergo this time my sub was between the raft and shore and the boom happened almost as soon as I clicked on 'deploy raft'.:hmm: I think next time I'll keep the shore on the starboard side and see what happens.