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life raft


Guest shane

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True.

I remember the RFD salesman telling me with a straight face that should I find myself in mid ocean and with a serious need to board the liferaft, and should it fail to deploy, I could just bring it right back and get a refund!

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Yep done that. It was fun. It was 10yrs over it's inspection date. I was going to have it serviced by the guys on base, but had a wee hickup. They had another identical to mine and they inflated it only to find they didn't have the correct fitting to deflate and repack it. Which was surprising seeing as they were RFD and I thought RFD rafts all used the same fittings. Anyway, they decided not to inflate mine. Seeing as it was now 10yrs over service, I expected it to probably be perished and so I pulled the cord myself at home. It inflated and stayed up for several days. It was good fun and interesting to see what stuff was packed inside and where. I even tried to eat the cakes of high energy biscuit things. Won't do that again. You will have to be reaaaaally hungry to eat that revolting stuff. I took all the goodies and put them in my grab bag. the Raft went over the fence to the neighbours. He had a heap of Kids that used it as a paddling pool and I didn't have to dump it.

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I nave 3 rafts in the garage , 1 must be 20 years out of date, might pop one up to go down the local river one day, do they have valves like inflatables for pumping up and deflating. A drift down the wanganui river perhaps? Although it might cause a few false alarms.

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Be careful of that. A life-raft has water pockets/bags underneath for stability. In a river, these could very easily be snagged on a submerged object and then pull the upstream side under. Both the bags and the canopy very dangerous in a river - even an apparently placid one like the whanganui. Don't underestimate the power moving water!

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IT made some good points about the water ballast bags underneath, blow it up in the garden or river bank and then cut the bags off with a knife. And the fittings are similar to an inflatable boat and they are easy to deflate. You've probably scored yourself a 20 year old waterproof torch (which won't work), a foot pump that looks useful but isn't, a blunt nosed knife and maybe some interesting charts and paraphernalia. All of which you'll dump in the bin eventually ;-) . Also if you're going to go down a river in it take the bottle off as well, Two ten inch crescent wrenches will probably take the hose off at the brass valve on the raft.

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Yes I,ve got a couple of workmates that are keen to float down the Wanganui river but I think I,d rather  take the big boat out to the barrier with the stove fridge surfboard etc etc. The risk with the liferaft down the river would be it falling apart halfway between nowhere and having to walk out or get a lift in another boat, would probably need to take another one as a spare, could also be a pretty slow trip if you had to go against the wind at any stage. Don,t think it would look good if we had to get rescued.

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