Seagreen
Well-Known Member
Faced with a "dire emergency", I set off the liferaft.
Now, I ought to clarify. The "dire emergency" was a lack of paddling pool on a hot sunday morning, and the liferaft was last serviced 12 years ago, and I bought it for a few quid to be a paddling pool, but that's not very interesting. What is of interest is what happened when I pulled the cord on a 27 year old liferaft, if any of your are tempted by Ebay offers. The raft in question is an RFD 4 person Seasava Mk. 1 sport model, for all you liferaft spotters.
First, the liferaft actually inflated as planned! Wow! My kids were very impressed. However, of real interest was the state of the raft and its contents. Various horrible faults were found:
1) The top-up valve was refitted incorrectly and continued to let air out.
2) The Pressure relief valve was no longer totally secured to the raft material and lost CO2 very fast. This valve eventually blew right out of the hull. This would have been catastrophic in any circumstance other that being inflated on a lawn.
There was also a small leak hole near the canopy support.
All the emergency kit bits were in the bag, but:
3) The torch did not work as the bulb was broken - the spare bulb works fine.
4) Spare batteries, 1 had corroded, the rest were just flat, as expected.
5) The rescue line and quoit. The line had a defect about 2/3 rds along, and had been knotted together - this was an original manufacturing fault.
Apart from that, it was all in fairly good nick, apart from some perishing on the rubber safety line supports. Apart from some big repairs - the repair kit glue was fine- the raft works very well as a pool. I shall be removing the C02 bottle, and patching the hole, and after removing the knife, and all the string from the raft, its a lot of fun for the kids.
But...
If I'd been daft enough to think that I could actually use it for real, and a lot of rafts end up on ebay, the consequences don't bear thinking about. Just a warning.
I think the quoit line was a manufacturers fault, for not checking the line as they made up the quoit bundle, and the Top-up valve, a servicing fault. The pressure valve, like some of the other parts on the raft had just perished and fractured, though had never been exposed to sunlight. I expected flat and corroded batteries, but the bulb came as a shock. This from a raft which had been sold as "dry stored". All the other equipment was ok, though there isn't much that could have gone wrong with it.
Has anyone else done this with an old raft at all? And what happened?
Now, I ought to clarify. The "dire emergency" was a lack of paddling pool on a hot sunday morning, and the liferaft was last serviced 12 years ago, and I bought it for a few quid to be a paddling pool, but that's not very interesting. What is of interest is what happened when I pulled the cord on a 27 year old liferaft, if any of your are tempted by Ebay offers. The raft in question is an RFD 4 person Seasava Mk. 1 sport model, for all you liferaft spotters.
First, the liferaft actually inflated as planned! Wow! My kids were very impressed. However, of real interest was the state of the raft and its contents. Various horrible faults were found:
1) The top-up valve was refitted incorrectly and continued to let air out.
2) The Pressure relief valve was no longer totally secured to the raft material and lost CO2 very fast. This valve eventually blew right out of the hull. This would have been catastrophic in any circumstance other that being inflated on a lawn.
There was also a small leak hole near the canopy support.
All the emergency kit bits were in the bag, but:
3) The torch did not work as the bulb was broken - the spare bulb works fine.
4) Spare batteries, 1 had corroded, the rest were just flat, as expected.
5) The rescue line and quoit. The line had a defect about 2/3 rds along, and had been knotted together - this was an original manufacturing fault.
Apart from that, it was all in fairly good nick, apart from some perishing on the rubber safety line supports. Apart from some big repairs - the repair kit glue was fine- the raft works very well as a pool. I shall be removing the C02 bottle, and patching the hole, and after removing the knife, and all the string from the raft, its a lot of fun for the kids.
But...
If I'd been daft enough to think that I could actually use it for real, and a lot of rafts end up on ebay, the consequences don't bear thinking about. Just a warning.
I think the quoit line was a manufacturers fault, for not checking the line as they made up the quoit bundle, and the Top-up valve, a servicing fault. The pressure valve, like some of the other parts on the raft had just perished and fractured, though had never been exposed to sunlight. I expected flat and corroded batteries, but the bulb came as a shock. This from a raft which had been sold as "dry stored". All the other equipment was ok, though there isn't much that could have gone wrong with it.
Has anyone else done this with an old raft at all? And what happened?
