It seemed a good idea to have the ship’s life raft inspected prior to setting off from Los Angeles in 2003 to cruise the world. When the present owners purchased their sailboat in 2001, it came with an Avon 6-person life raft, mounted in a hard canister on the back deck.
The new 4 Person Avon, in a canister, was purchased and mounted on deck in 2003. Five years later, the raft was inspected and repacked in October 2008 by USA Services, Inc., a certified Avon repacker, in Norfolk, VA.. The owners were not present for the repacking. In February 2013, the raft was shipped overland from Whangerei, New Zealand to Wilco Marine Services in Auckland, another certified Avon repacker. At Wilco Marine Services, the raft owners were again not present for the repacking but it was inspected, vacuum bagged, repacked and again took its place on the deck of the owners boat.
Information still on the Avon website recommends their rafts should be brought in for “servicing within 3 years of date of manufacture then every 3 years. Boats that operate for hire or sail in tropical waters remain subject to an annual inspection.”
An annual inspection for a life raft on a long range cruising boat is simply not physically or economically practical. It makes sense, for marine use, a life raft should to be exceedingly reliable even if specified and used for near shore use.
Avon used several manufacturers around the world and it was not determined from which plant this raft came from. During the failed servicing, the inspector pointed to the terrible looking glued joins and said heat sealing is far superior.
In the world of life raft repacking, there is a debate about how to best protect a large deflated object which has been severely compressed into a small capsule or set in a soft valise. The question arises with vacuuming bagging. Vacuum bagging a raft may give added protection from moisture but adds additional compression on the folded creases which could cause porosity in those areas with resultant air loss. However, according to the old Avon literature, “All Avon Ocean and Coastline life rafts are now vacuum sealed in special plastic envelope, before being packed in a valise or canister.” So the vacuum packing of the raft when serviced in New Zealand was the manufacturer’s preference to which, the owners had complied. Additionally, if a severely compressed life raft is sitting on deck in a tropical sun, temperatures of 160 degrees can be reached, further affecting the already stressed material. But one would think life raft manufacturers understand this and use that certainty as a component of their construction, the same as an architect specifies proper building materials to stand against U.V., wind loading and temperature changes. (See the February 2013 issue of Practical Sailor, “Life Raft Inspection an Inside Look”) If a life raft manufacturer thought sun shining on a deck mounted life raft to be a significant problem, then a sun cover would be suggested. In any case, the owners always had a sun cover shielding the raft.
On the www.avonmarine.com website, the raft owner found a contact form under the “Find a Dealer” link, and tried several times to send a message using that form, but kept getting the following: “Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact the administrator by another method.”
Certainly the raft owners would like feed back from Zodiac/Avon now known as Zodiac Nautic. But it gets even more confusing as there is another brand of “Zodiac” liferafts owned by SurvivetechZodiac. Over the years operations have been spun off, bought and sold or acquired by other companies.
Avon literature on the internet states the 4 Person Avon life raft is guaranteed for 12 years. But a guarantee term is not considered an expiration date. A reasonable person would expect this raft to be serviceable for many years past the guarantee date. This is a wake up call for the owners of all life rafts to take nothing for granted.
The raft was purchased on March 12, 2003 and the cost was $2,922.75.
Raft serial #AVBOA983L203
As a postscript. When this Avon raft was manufactured, Zodiac had contracted the manufacture of Avon liferafts to several companies in different countries. Apparently the quality assurance was not consistent. Working through a liferaft dealer, the raft owner was able to get a response from Zodiac and Zodiac was willing to sell the owners a new raft at cost. When the owners agreed to this proposal and tried to arrange shipment of the raft, they lost all communication with their contact at Zodiac. In the end, they bought a Lalizas raft.
Some of this information was used in Practical Sailor articles March 8, 2017 and Features April 2017 Issue
prop. Of course this is the often used ploy to say we caused the anchoring problem and now we owe the fisherman money. In no uncertain terms I told him to move, which he did and then we were able to leave. The strange thing is, an hour later when we were about 7 miles on our way to Langkawi, he showed up along side us well out to sea. He motored along, motioning with his arms like we needed to give him something. I won’t bore you with the whole story but after 45 minutes, I tired of him and his unsafe maneuvers across our bow and off our stern so I fired a flare into the sky. That pretty much solved the problem for a while…..but he came close again. When 
I started taking pictures with my telephoto lens, that seemed to have the best effect and he disappeared for good heading back to Bidan. He burned up a lot of gasoline for nothing. I am attaching some pictures in case someone in Penang keeps track of these things. The Red Bull insignia on the side of his boat is distinctive.
“The word Thaipusam is a combination of the name of the month, Thai, January/February, and the name of a star, Pusam. This particular star is at its highest point during the festival. The festival commemorates the occasion when 
of the Thaipusam festival is to pray to Murugan to receive his grace so that bad traits are destroyed or favors granted or to make penance for transgressions.
are donated by families or civic groups so the crowds can break them on the pavement. The broken coconut symbolizes the breaking of ones bad ego to reveal purity inside. But by far, most onlookers have a great romp of smashing as many coconuts as are available onto the street and send the coconut water and shards flying. It makes a tremendous mess but the organizers come soon behind with sweepers to shove the shards aside. This makes way for the gold and silver chariots. The golden chariot is pulled by 2 small water buffalo. The smaller silver chariot is pulled by people. These chariots carry dignitaries. After they pass, front end loaders and dump trucks follow to clean up the masses of coconuts shards along the side of the street.
Devotees will make the 4 mile pilgrimage walking barefoot on the black pavement. Water trucks move along the route to help cool the surface but in the 90 degree weather, the surfaces quickly dry and heat up again. Asphalt can become 40 to 60 degrees hotter than the air temperature. This is only part of the burden met by the devotees.
restricted diet and then completely fast on the last few days before the pilgrimage; naturally, these extremes demand of very high level of mental and physical fortitude.”
more extreme in their efforts.
decoration from tiny hooks piercing the skin of the chest, back, arms, cheeks, forehead. The mouth and tongue is an impressive piercing spot leaving little opportunity for a devotee to drink or eat along the marching route. Some devotees prefer to just bite down on a spear rather than piercing it through their cheeks.
harness themselves with many hooks on their backs then have reins held by an attendant. The devotee must lean forward to make progress literally pulling the skin away from their back.
It is amazing how trash was strewn around the grounds of the sacred temple. Paper cups and all sorts of plastic containers were trampled underfoot and blew in the breeze. People just dropped their trash wherever. This was not all their fault as the temple organizers provided very few trash cans around the grounds. By the end of the second day, the temple grounds were a trash pit. Any other festival, during this time of the Chinese New Year, was well organized with plenty of trash cans and a detail of workers always working through the celebration picking what little trash was
cultural diversity in Malaysia butsadly, at times, the diversity has stark differences.
