Sue and I were cleaning out an old storage bin in the backyard today and uncovered our original West Marine inflatable life jackets. We procured these manually inflated vest to use on our 1st sailboat, a Hunter 26′ water ballasted trailer-able called Snoozie, that we purchased new in 1995 just before we were married.
It should be noted that inflatable life jackets were not US Coast Guard approved until 1997, so these do not meet USCG requirements. The literature states that inflatables should be replaced every 10 years, so these were technically passed their service life, having never been inflated, when we sold the Hunter 26 in 2005.
That same year they were relegated to “back-up” service when we purchased our big Hunter 46, also named Snoozie, as we purchased USCG approved inflatables to go with the new boat. The old inflatables were placed into storage after the big boat was sold in 2010 and generally forgotten about over the years.
So the question is, will they still save your life after so many years? We tried them both, and even though they are showing their age are a bit rusted and frayed around the edges (aren’t we all?), the answer was a resounding YES! You can see the video of the second test below.
