Liferaft servicing- I can't belieeeve it!

T

Tormod

New Member
Joined
21 Feb 2012
Messages
20
Location
Boat- relocated to Lagos Marina
Visit site
Just asked for a quotation from my nearest Service station to do the first 3 yearly service on my £750 6-man cannister liferaft. Cost for service will be approx £350-£400 + vat (3 year dating) dependant on the expiry date of the light / battery inside. That makes it nearly £500 ????? Am I missing something or is this the normal price I should expect. Seems overly expensive! Would appreciate your thoughts before I commit. Tks Tormod
 
Last edited:
Sadly it's the correct ballpark - which is in turn why so many rafts are effectively binned when they go onto an annual service programme. In fact last year I chucked away a perfectly good ten year old raft for precisely this reason; nobody wanted it even for free!
 
Unless you're there when they service it how do you know they have actually done anything ?? You don't. You just have to trust them. Over 40 years in the marine world has taught me to trust very few. Hence I do my own servicing & falsify the paperwork as necessary.
 
Tormod said:
Just asked for a quotation from my nearest Service station to do the first 3 yearly service on my £750 6-man cannister liferaft. Cost for service will be approx £350-£400 + vat (3 year dating) dependant on the expiry date of the light / battery inside. That makes it nearly £500 ????? Am I missing something or is this the normal price I should expect. Seems overly expensive! Would appreciate your thoughts before I commit. Tks Tormod
Click to expand...

Have you tried Norwest Marine in Liverpool? I only found out about them after my liferaft (now sold) was committed to Cosalt, but Norwest quoted about 1/3 the price.

http://norwestmarine.co.uk/
 
Tormod said:
Just asked for a quotation from my nearest Service station to do the first 3 yearly service on my £750 6-man cannister liferaft. Cost for service will be approx £350-£400 + vat (3 year dating) dependant on the expiry date of the light / battery inside. That makes it nearly £500 ????? Am I missing something or is this the normal price I should expect. Seems overly expensive! Would appreciate your thoughts before I commit. Tks Tormod
Click to expand...

Does this include the provision of a new set of off-shore flares and other replaceable items? Can't be just a labour charge can it?
 
Tormod, I should have mentioned that the price of a liferaft service depends quite a lot on its manufacturer and categorisation - e.g. ISO 24, SOLAS B, ISO 9650-1, etc. Each of these will have different quantities of food, water, flares etc packed within them. In addition some brands are more expensive to service than others.
 
Sandyman said:
Unless you're there when they service it how do you know they have actually done anything ?? You don't. You just have to trust them. Over 40 years in the marine world has taught me to trust very few. Hence I do my own servicing & falsify the paperwork as necessary.
Click to expand...
+1. I got a liferaft serviced a few years ago, and when I attended to watch it being inflated we agreed they would add a heaving line and quoit. When the raft came back from servicing I hadn't been charged for the line/quoit - they had forgotten to fit it! Oops...
 
With the expense you do wonder just how much you need one unless, and even if, you blue-water cruise. You can use a dinghy etc to escape a fire but most other situations you would do better to stay with the boat and await rescue. It may be that the initial £800 and the £400 of servicing would be better spent on things such as plbs, epirbs, emergency VHF etc. And that is not even thinking about preventative stuff such as a few automatic fire extinquishers, some extra jubilee clips for hozes and a few good bungs. Sometimes I wonder if we don't spend too much on this one large sticky plaster of a liferaft rather than on all the other stuff. Of course, if money is no object...
 
Tormod said:
On the Clyde so guess a wee bit far south for me. (Make- Ocean).
Click to expand...

I'd also recommend Suffolk Marine Safety (used to be called Suffolk Sailing). They offer a base price of £125 inc VAT, plus whatever consumables are needed. They'll collect and return by courier for £30, although I guess you'd need to check that this includes your location. They'll quote you for the consumables before going ahead. See http://www.suffolkmarinesafety.com/Service_6_Person_Liferaft/p1825833_8308979.aspx

I've used them for years, and they seem genuine, straightforward people who are keen to do a professional job.

One of the problems with 3-year service intervals is that some of the contents of the liferaft have service lives in different increments. So, for example, if the flares have a 5-year service life, they'd still have to be replaced every 3 years.
 
I do my own. Well worth inflating it to see what it looks like and whats in it and get familiar with the equipment and layout. Compared with a lot of projects discussed here servicing a life raft is pretty straightforward.
 
pmagowan said:
With the expense you do wonder just how much you need one unless, and even if, you blue-water cruise. You can use a dinghy etc to escape a fire but most other situations you would do better to stay with the boat and await rescue. It may be that the initial £800 and the £400 of servicing would be better spent on things such as plbs, epirbs, emergency VHF etc. And that is not even thinking about preventative stuff such as a few automatic fire extinquishers, some extra jubilee clips for hozes and a few good bungs. Sometimes I wonder if we don't spend too much on this one large sticky plaster of a liferaft rather than on all the other stuff.
Click to expand...

That's precisely why I decided to sell the liferaft that came with my boat (valise, so impractical anyway) and do without. If I ever do a longer passage - I'm hoping to do Scotland to Norway some time - I'll reconsider, but for my sort of UK coastal sailing I just don't see much point.
 
pmagowan said:
With the expense you do wonder just how much you need one unless, and even if, you blue-water cruise. You can use a dinghy etc to escape a fire but most other situations you would do better to stay with the boat and await rescue. It may be that the initial £800 and the £400 of servicing would be better spent on things such as plbs, epirbs, emergency VHF etc. And that is not even thinking about preventative stuff such as a few automatic fire extinquishers, some extra jubilee clips for hozes and a few good bungs. Sometimes I wonder if we don't spend too much on this one large sticky plaster of a liferaft rather than on all the other stuff. Of course, if money is no object...
Click to expand...

Have you ever considered spending 24 hours in your dinghy in a storm, in coastal UK waters you would be likely be suffering from.exposure. On our last boat we carried both a liferaft and inflated dinghy, but for safety use the liferaft was key. I must admit 500 seems a lot for a standard service, our last one a few years ago was under half that, so one wonders just what was included in the deal.
 
maxi77 said:
Have you ever considered spending 24 hours in your dinghy in a storm, in coastal UK waters you would be likely be suffering from.exposure.
Click to expand...

You'd be dead of hypothermia in your liferaft by then, and wishing you were dead from seasickness long before that. Has anyone ever spent 24 hours in a liferaft before being rescued in UK coastal waters?
 
pmagowan said:
With the expense you do wonder just how much you need one unless, and even if, you blue-water cruise. You can use a dinghy etc to escape a fire but most other situations you would do better to stay with the boat and await rescue. It may be that the initial £800 and the £400 of servicing would be better spent on things such as plbs, epirbs, emergency VHF etc. And that is not even thinking about preventative stuff such as a few automatic fire extinquishers, some extra jubilee clips for hozes and a few good bungs. Sometimes I wonder if we don't spend too much on this one large sticky plaster of a liferaft rather than on all the other stuff. Of course, if money is no object...
Click to expand...

+1
memory failing (was it Robert MacDougal and his family or something)?
They took to inflatable life raft and when it failed eventually, took to the grp dinghy and survived for many days - there is a thread on here somewhere about them plus the book and then another book by his son.

Lucky they had the grp dinghy or else they may have perished owing to life raft failing
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top