Extending life raft life

[akopac]

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.