Practical Sailor has a good comparison of 6-man rafts here: http://www.practical-sailor.com/issu...es_5422-1.html (2007).
I'm planning on buying the Viking RescYou 4-man raft, not the "Pro" version. Like the Practical Sailor reviewers, I don't like the high windage/wave exposure of the Pro canopy. If the raft inflates inverted, I'll have to flip it. It also weighs 11 pounds less than the Pro. Both have the same ISO 9650 Type I certs. I also do overwater flights as a commercial pilot, and the prospect of shoving 11 pounds less out a cabin door really matters (the aviation liferaft I use now is a joke).
At risk of beating a dead horse...
I decided upon the Viking RescYou 4 man but have held off a buy to eek out the max cert duration on the new raft. In the meantime I have continued to check out other possibilities.
I came across this on Craigslist:
http://olympic.craigslist.org/bpo/5545429605.html
I got a very rapid response from the seller org which is
https://www.spindriftrowing.com/
I called and spoke to Sonya - she confirmed price and ISO cert.
This seems like a very attractive package for about $800 less than the Viking (valise models)
datasheet here: http://www.datrex.com/index/pdfdownloads/doc_id/8
Sonya is shipping some rafts to Monterey in coming days (apparently she is outfitting some rowers) and she needed a third order to get free shipment. I am seriously thinking of jumping on board.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Not to dissuade you, but last month I was at a Safety at Sea class in Annapolis MD and they demo'd a Viking RescYou Pro 4 person raft and it didn't deploy all that well. Now, I'm guessing this was a demo life raft that had been used dozens of times before and maybe it just needed to be changed out, but it didn't fully inflate and was missing the manual inflation pump (got a video of this if anyone wants to see it).
That being said, Viking RescYou Pro is one of the life rafts I am looking at for my own use when I hopefully do the SHTP in 2018.
Couldn't we invite the Viking RescYou folks out to a "Deploy Off" with other raft makers?
Another cost to consider is the inspection and repacking. I have crawled around on the Viking and it seems quite tough and well built. The higher windage of the pro is offset by its ability to self right.......in theory.
Chris