I am looking for anyone’s opinion on the quality of various immersion suits, especially Viking and Imperial.
My ship (SOLAS & USCG compliant) needs to replace about 20 suits that are over 20 years old - we had a bunch of reflective material replaced but the replacements are failing. Don’t think these suits will pass the next 3 year inspection.
We currently have Imperial and Sterns, but the Sterns are all over 20 years old and the candidates for replacement.
Has anyone used, inspected, donned, the Viking suits ?
Viking is good to go. Stands up to abuse fairly well.
I would contact whoever your vendor is for suit testing and ask them, they will know which suits fail the soonest. That’s provided they have a good reputation, some vendors will recommend stuff they know you’ll have to replace more often in the hopes you’ll buy from them.
Keep in mind that with Covid-19 related shortages manufacturing all over the world is pretty iffy, so if you can wait I would.
Viking suits are good quality, but uncomfortable. When donned during drills crew will have trouble with their hair getting caught in the zipper.
Viking has good survival suits by my experience. On the vessel I work on we changed out all the survival suits in client cabins with vacuum packed survival suits. It changes the service interval from 3 to 5 years.
Another brand is Hansen protection, have not tried it myself but its the brand the oil companies in Norway uses, so it should be of high quality.
Thanks for the feedback on Viking suits.
I looked up the Hansen, but they aren’t USCG approved, so I won’t try to get that to pass on a US flagged ship.
Interesting idea on the vacuum packing of immersion suits. I know Viking will vacuum seal life rafts for a 30 month life (vs 12 month standard) between servicing, but can’t do that for USCG inspected vessels since the stupid medications in the first aid kits won’t last 30 months !! Crazy how US medications expire so much faster than foreign supplied medications…
Viking will also do immersion suit exchange program (they give you newly inspected suits at 3 year intervals) but won’t do that for USCG inspected vessels, since the immersion suits need to be marked with the vessel name.
Agree on the supply chain issue - not a lot of the Imperial brand sitting on the shelf
Thanks for the feedback on the Viking suit
Interesting observation about hair getting caught in the zipper - I know the Viking zipper runs more diagonal vs the traditional vertical, putting it to the size of the face vs center of the face.