I notice WM has inflatable PFDs on sale. What's the concensus of WM vs Mustang vs???? Any experience out there? Hopefully, by choice....
inflatable PFD
- Thread starter Mark Maulden
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Well I have two of the wm ocean series pfd's. in December after a long grueling sail in the snow got back to dock and put everything away and probably 5 minutes later had it auto inflate for no apparent reason! Nobody was near it and it was
Resting upside down on the d ring. Called west marine and they said it was 75$ to re arm but would only charge me $50 being that it went off by itself. I think I'd price out the arming kits and use that to help decide which one you want to go with. Checkout defender. Ive found them to have the best prices.
Cheers
Jared
Mustang is higher quality than WM. I have two of 'em, and two of the WM ones. The Mustangs have held up better over 4 seasons of use.
We're on our third season with Mustang hydrostatic inflatables, and they're well-made. I manually inflate them (with dry air, not breath!) each spring to test. They weren't the cheapest, but inexpensive ones hadn't received Canadian Coastguard approval yet when we bought. The police water units up here all use Mustangs.
I do believe that for casual cruising use, the less expensive ones would be fine, but for heavy use (eg racers) and longest life I'd certainly stay with Mustangs or the Spinlock Deckvest.
I do believe that for casual cruising use, the less expensive ones would be fine, but for heavy use (eg racers) and longest life I'd certainly stay with Mustangs or the Spinlock Deckvest.
If you google "attainable adventure cruising" you'll come across a wealth of info from highly experienced sailors John and Phyllis of Morgan's Cloud. They do a comparison of PDFs and feel the Spinlock is the most comfortable. Well worth perusing their website for that and much else.
Never get an auto inflation life jacket for a sailboat, you will never be stop re arming them, they will go off all the time, they are great for a ship, or say a speed boat on a good day, but on a sailboat, they get wet, and the little pill type thing that stops the spring driving the needle into the gas cannister dissolves, and it goes off. Get one with only a toggle activation, another problem we found with the self inflators, was that they go off when people dont need them to go off, and trying to swim with a fully inflated life jacket is very difficult. People have been killed by them, when they fell over the side, and it went off, trapping them under the boat, thats not to say that they wouldnt have pulled the toggle anyway, and got trapped under the boat, but you just dont know.
I googled them and came across a link for a old broker that I bought from yrs ago now in the south seas. Sent him an email and he remembered me. amazing how the circles run
That problem doesn't exist with the hydrostatically-triggered PFDs. They don't go bang unless they detect water pressure (ie you're IN the water, not simply wet). We opted for these because the bulk of our sailing is casual but usually in cold water, and the most likely reason for entering the water would be an accident - collision, boom hit, etc.in which the sailor may be unconscious.
We're also getting comfortable with harnesses, cos staying with the boat can be more useful than floating away from it.
I have a 15 year old WM auto with over 10,000 NM on it, accidental inflation is not a problem. I think it's easy to understand the benefits of auto inflate on any type of vessel and am surprised to see anyone advise against them for a sailboat.
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