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SOSpenders not working
On Mon, 03 May 2004 19:04:10 GMT, (Lee
Huddleston) wrote:
I had a funny incident with a SOSpender auto-inflate. I wore it while
riding out a hurricane at a dock in North Carolina. As you can
imagine, the rain was pretty intense at times. I was concerned that
the vest would inflate while I was working on the deck and get in my
way. That never occurred. But after the hurricane passed over, I
took off the vest and laid it on a piece of plastic on a bunk.
Apparently I inadvertently laid it somewhat upside down. Within a few
minutes the water still on the cloth cover of the unit ran down and
under the flap protecting the activator and POOF, fully inflated. :-)
The only other experience was when my brother was sailing with me and
fell overboard (he swears that I was trying to drown him).
Fortunately, the vest automatically inflated very quickly.
Does anyone know of any advisory or instructions that recommend that
the dissolvable bobbin (that makes the auto-inflator work) be replaced
after a period of time? Or should the CO2 bottle be removed and the
mechanism be exercised to be sure it will work smoothly? The cost of
rearming makes it too expensive to actually try out the units and
waste the bobbin and the CO2 bottle.
IIRC, the instructions that come with the harness say the bobbin
should be relaced yearly. I don't have it right here to check.
I know I tested a pair of them last year that had not been tested
since the year I bought them, about 5 (hiss, boo). One of them had a
hole in it as I discovered after I used the manual inflator. It
gradually softened and was deflated the next day.
Rodney Myrvaagnes Opinionated old geezer
Brutal dictators are routinely reelected by 90+%
margins. Only in a truly advanced democracy can
one win an election by a negative 600,000 votes.
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