So Soy Libre’s life raft was an
Avon 4 man. It was 40 years old!!! It was mounted the whole time on our aft
deck. I got a new one and set off the old one to see what kind of condition it was in before I tossed it. We’ve always got it inspected, but when
Avon stopped making these rafts we couldn’t anymore. The raft is in perfect condition except the strobe light
battery is dead. I owe the long life to it being covered with a reflectics cover ( Home Depot) I made for it and a a sunbrella cover on top of that. It’s been on
deck continuously in
Florida, down through the tropics through
Panama, up to Sacto., back down to
Ecuador and back and the last 10ish years in the Sacto.
delta sun and heat

. That’s a lot of UV.