This month's Practical Boat Owner magazine (July 2007) ran a good 'how to' article on servicing lifejackets, so that was open on the page as I set to work at our kitchen table. First, I unscrewed each gas cylinder and checked it had not been fired, before screwing it back in, hand-tight. Then I moved down to the automatic firing head (all of my lifejackets are automatically activated by immersion in water). I was shocked to discover that in one case, the firing head was embossed with an expiry date of March 2007 - despite the lifejacket having been purchased in August 2005 with a three-year guarantee!
Fortunately, the firing heads fitted to the remaining lifejackets expired in mid-2008. I managed to find a re-arming kit online for the particular lifejacket that needed it and, having got that ordered, sat back for a moment and contemplated. I'd never activated a lifejacket. Since I had to re-arm one of mine, why not try it out now? It might be interesting, and it would certainly be educational.
I figured that climbing in the bath to trigger automatic inflation sounded like too much hard work, so I opted to pull the manual cord instead. I was a little bit nervous. I didn't know whether there would be a big bang as the gas cartridge was fired, or whether to expect an explosive inflation of the vehicle airbag variety.
In the event, it was all very calm. There was no bang at all, just a quiet hissing noise as the lifejacket filled up, which took something between 1 and 2 seconds.
Once the jacket was inflated, it was really very full indeed - think of a well-inflated balloon as an analogy. If you ever need to inflate a jacket using the mouthpiece, bear this point in mind: blow till you think the jacket is full - then keep blowing some more. We are talking extremely highly-inflated. As in, Beckham could take a free kick with it.
Above: Just in case (like me) you've never seen one and wondered, this is what one of those compact, rolled-up 150N lifejackets looks like after you've pulled the toggle.
I'd made sure the jacket was fitted snugly before pulling the cord. Following inflation, the straps became a fair bit tighter, especially across the chest, although not painfully or constrictingly so.
But how tight was tight enough? Would the jacket still ride up? The answer was yes - a good, even pull upwards would still cause the jacket to ride up by a few inches. I could easily imagine the difficulties that would follow if you were unfortunate enough to be in the water at the time. The sensation of being held firmly by the jacket - which ought to be a good thing - then becomes counter-productive, because it's clearly so darned buoyant that it will fight your every attempt to pull it back down into the correct position. What with its size and grip, moving around, not to mention contorting yourself to pull it back down, would be seriously hard. As to adjusting the strap to tighten it - the way those twee little airline safety briefings describe, just before take-off - you could forget it. I had real difficulty even unbuckling the strap at the front to release myself.
All of which serves only reinforces the point, made in the Ouzo report, that crotch- or thigh straps are de rigeur. Once it's on, the jacket isn't getting any better-fitted, and if it is to do its job, those straps are likely to make all the difference. Increasingly, I am coming to the view that it's as-good-as-criminal for the marine "safety" industry to sell lifejackets without crotch- or thigh-straps, and to market such straps only as an optional accessory. Fortunately, I did buy thigh straps for my jackets at the same time as I purchased the jackets themselves. I would urge anyone reading this to go out and get straps at the first available opportunity. And to use them.
Oh, and do remember to check the expiry date on the firing mechanism, won't you, even if your lifejackets were bought quite recently? Three-year guarantees, it would seem, are not quite what they appear to be....
