I am working onboard a passenger vessel as the 3/0, we have about 30 immersion suits, Stearns adult universal and adult XL. They are all due for a 3 year IMO recommended inflation test to verify that there are not any small tears or leaks in the suits. Our current location is Kingston, Jamaica. We will be here for a few weeks, then head to the Nassau, Bahamas. Does anyone know of any authorized servicing facilities in Jamaica, or in the Carribean that we can send our suits to. The other possiblity is to buy a kit to inflate and check the suits ourselves, I don’t know much about them yet, but I am doing a little research to see how much they cost. If we went this route we would need to have the proper repair materials too, any tips on these issues are welcome.
You can pretty easily jury-rig an inflation kit. Use a shop vac, attach one end of the hose to the exhale side and the other end to a small crab pot buoy. Find a buoy that fits nicely in the hood opening, et. voila, you just saved a little bit of money.
By the way, I HIGHLY recommend the 2009 AMSEA newsletters for great reading on all things related to immersion suit inspection and maintenance.
By the way, I’m not affiliated with AMSEA, but how can you not love a nonprofit that has this as their mission statement:
To reduce injury and death in the marine and fresh water environment through education and training provided by a network of qualified marine safety instructors.
Thanks for the good information
I am also looking to order some storage plugs for the drager SCBA bottles we have onboard, they are 200 bar bottles.
I had trouble finding anything useful on their webpage in terms of ordering spare parts