Amongst other things…the Life Raft – September 19, 2002, St. Augustine, FL, USA

It occurred to me my life is a bit unusual when last Saturday night, I had a lift raft blown up in my living room.  Probably not a typical site for most folks. 

Our life raft is officially out of certification, and we wanted to ensure it still worked in the unlikely event we ever had to use it.  Something to note is they are typically vacuum packed into a small container so when we opened and inflated it, it was um…difficult to get back into the box. 

It took us several try’s and we still have never got the box shut. We ended up buying a newer raft which is now stored neatly under the settee on the boat ready to be deployed if needed. We tried to sell the older one, (which seems to still work fine), but since it’s out of date, we ended up just giving away to another sailor. We could only do this knowing it worked (which it seems to). And with the lift raft taken care of, Ron moved onto the mountain of other things we wanted to get done before launching again.

The progress has been great though. The list includes washing and buffing the boat, getting a portable fridge/freezer installed, fiberglassing the bilge crack, testing/ fixing our old inverter as a backup, fixing the AIS, new pinstriping and graphics for the boat, and much more. Doesn’t she look good?

We are wrapping up our time here in St. Augustine and the boat is getting very close to being ready to launch.  We can’t wait to get back on her!