Annual Life Jacket Servicing

[pyrojames]

Just brought all the boat's LJs home for servicing: inflate for 24 hours, check CO2 cylinders, firing mechanism and Hammar dates.

Nine to do:
One with no cylinder! My old manual one...
One with the Hammar out of date, but only by a month and half
One with the cylinder punctured, and the pill in pieces, but it doesn't appear to have inflated at any stage.

The last is the most worrying! Always worth checking them every year.

 

[Eyore]

Absolutely, corroded cylinders seems to be a regular problem.

 

[jac]

100% agree.

Brought all ours home today. Sat in a pile in the hall at the moment. Hope they are in better state than yours!!!

 

[prv]

So do you charter or share your boat? Otherwise if it's only you that uses it, I'm bemused that jackets could get into that state without you noticing at the time. Unless perhaps you have kleptomaniac guests who would secretly unpack the jacket they were lent to unscrew and pocket the bottle

Good job you're checking them and found out the easy way :encouragement:

Pete

 

[Kelpie]

Just wrote off a one year old LJ, failed the inflation test.

 

[IanL]

I found my Hammar inflator cracked and would not hold any pressure at all. Just fitted a new one and it seems fine after 36 hours. I hate to think how long the old one had been broken.

 

[Boat441]

Check ours every year. Need something fixing generally every other year.

Always worth checking!!

 

[pyrojames]

I stopped using my manual one in 2013, and think I must have pulled the bottle off then, and subsequently forgotten about it. I don't think I used it last year, but I couldn't be certain. Oops.

The one with the collapsed tablet holds air, but I fail to see how the tablet collapsed, the cylinder punctured, and it did not inflate...