Hello,

1. Every 3 yrs., per the manufacturer's requirements. The raft is vacuum-packed. Only done it once. I think we were past exactly 3 months. The raft is now 4.5 years old.
2. No tropics for us!
3. No. At the one inspection we did, it inflated flawlessly.
4. Winslow Superlight Offshore Plus.

Other comments/anecdotes:
A. Our raft is kept on a water-tight deck-level locker accessible from the cockpit, and sits on a pedestal inside the locker   . Even with some water ingress to the locker, the raft would remain high and dry, but we maintain the seals so it remains water tight.

B. Our boat is from 2002. When we bought it in 2012, its original Zodiac life raft was on the bottom of a different deck-level locker. The seals had not been maintained. The raft was sitting in a puddle of salt water. That Zodiac required annual service but its last was 2010 or so. We inquired with our local inflatable service and he said... "Zodiac?" "From 2002?" "Ummm... you are welcome to bring it, but chances are I'll condemn it!" I guess he does not much respect Zodiac as a life-raft brand! We never brought it in, as there was a minimum inspection fee. Other friends had an older Zodiac life raft from circa 1992. It had not been inspected in a decade. In 2014, we threw a pool party and launched the Zodiacs. The 90's Zodiac started to inflate and immediately broke up at the seams. Complete failure. All the gas escaped and it wasn't even good as a float. Our 2002 Zodiac inflated well. All the materials inside were found in good condition and dry.

C. In 2013 we took an "Offshore" seminary. Part of it was going to sea and actually deploying a life raft. The seminary is offered by a very respectable outfit. We threw the thing overboard, pulled the release... it inflated about 5% before a hose broke between the gas canister and the flotation tubes. All the gas escaped. The raft never even broke its closing straps. It bobbed somewhat afloat, folded, and it would hardly served as a float for even one person. True, the raft had been deployed numerous times before, but it was always re-packed by the same local inflatable service that I had taken my Zodiac to.

Cheers,

Hi Neville,
I became curious about your topic and called Winslow. The factory reported their rafts average 12-15 years in the field, but it is not unusual to have 20 year old rafts return for servicing and pass all service requirements. Dick

Hi Neville,
Please do write the article. It is an important topic.
From casual observation, the failure of life rafts is not a hidden topic: it is just one that our magazines fail to write about as it is not in their financial best interests. I will be interested in whether you find any magazine willing to publish your article.
Please look to Beth Leonard and Evans Starzinger’s web site for details, but years ago on the other side of the world, Oz, (if memory serves), they got a number of rafts together from experienced cruisers to save money on their servicing. She reported a very disturbing percentage failed.
I am curious about the tropics being an issue. Are Survitec’s rafts carried on deck in a plastic case? And is their supposition that their plastic case allows UV to permeate? If plastic cases are UV permeable, that, in itself, should be more widely disseminated knowledge. If so, then all cases should be upgraded: their bad.
Ours is a Winslow 6-person raft, valise packed and stored in a cockpit locker* so UV is not an issue. We were 8 years in tropics. It is 16 years old and we have learned from the company and from the various packers that if it passes the tests of the every-3rd-year servicing, that there is no “aging out” of the raft.
Our raft has been serviced 5 times by 4 different re-packers in 4 different countries and we have been quite pleased with the work and the professionalism of the people. Once or twice, circumstances led us to wait till 4 years between servicing.
My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy
*My raft is stored in a locker. It is my belief that items stored on deck are subject to loss and/or damage to the boat in a knockdown or when a boat falls off a wave. Very few on-deck locations on a boat are safe for a raft and most installations are inadequate for what offshore conditions can dish out.

Recently, after completing our seven year circum-navigation, we watched our life raft being opened to have it serviced. When the guy carefully unfolded the raft, he found that the glue had started to fail in many places, including the seams holding the two buoyancy rings together and also where the rubber floor joins to the rings. He condemned it as irreparable.

It’s a bit worrying that the life raft would have fallen to pieces if we’d have had to use it in anger. You can just imagine having to abandon ship in a storm; inflating the life raft; throwing in our carefully prepared survival grab bags; stepping into the life raft as our yacht sinks below the waves, only to find the floor peeling loose and the buoyancy rings separating.

The life raft has a 12 year warranty and was manufactured in Aug 2006, so it's within the warranty period, but the company (Survitec) are refusing my warranty claim on the basis that I've not had the life-raft serviced within their recommended schedule. Their sales literature proudly state that the liferaft service period is 3 years, but the small print says that if its used in the tropics then the service period should be every 12 months.

I'm going to write an article on the reliability of inflatable liferafts and I'd be interested to hear of anyone's experiences with servicing and/or failures.

In particular:
1. How often do you have your liferaft serviced?
2. Are you sailing in the tropics?
3. Have you experienced any failures of your life-raft?
4. Manufacturer and Model.