Life Raft

We were working on the boat, making it ready for the voyage ahead, when I noticed the emergency raft sitting in its fiberglass box on its cradle.  On top was a hydrostatic release that would trigger a CO2 bottle to automatically inflate when it hit the water.  This triggered a memory, followed by a smile.  I had forgotten all about this story.

It was sometime in the early seventies and I was married, living on Walnut St in Rochester, Michigan.  It was a second story apartment that, in any other place or time would have been called a closet.  A 10’x10’ living room with a hallway kitchen that connected to the bed room and bathroom that was even smaller.  Among my hippie friends we had the nicest place.  We had real furniture instead of cinder block and milk crate shelves or wire spool tables.  I wasn’t in a band anymore, I was married. 

I recall the day that my friend Bill asked me if I wanted a 12 man raft.  I thought it would be cool to take it to the lake and anchor it out in the water filled with ice, beer, Boones Farm and Annie Green Springs.  Bill had “picked it up” somewhere couldn’t figure out what to do with it.  He assured me that it didn’t leak even though he had never tried to inflate it.  He lugged it up to the apartment on a Saturday morning in its bag and dumped it in the middle of the living room.  My wife was not happy.  “What the hell do we want that piece of crap for?”  I tried to explain all the cool things we could do with it.  I told her about the lake idea, I told her if we ever got a speed boat that we could tow it and I might have said we could camp in it.  I couldn’t think up things to use it for fast enough.  She had taken me by surprise, how could she not like it.  Why couldn’t she understand that it was just a “cool thing” and let that be enough to want to own it?  As badly as I wanted to own it I still wanted to inspect the dusty goods so I pulled it out of the bag.  On the bag was written “Property of _________airlines”.  I didn’t ask questions and I still don’t believe that somewhere an airliner is flying across the Atlantic with one raft missing.  It was pretty old and I had my doubts it would hold air now that I looked at it.  On the side I found a pocket with a large CO2 cylinder inside.  This had a metal lever attached to it and a lanyard attached to that.  It was a sure thing that this old cylinder had lost its charge years ago.  I pulled on the lanyard just to see how it worked.

My first wife was a tiny thing and a former gymnast but she wasn’t small enough or fast enough to get out of the way.  She was launched into the kitchen butt first.  Bill and I were pinned against the wall along with the furniture and a very surprised Black Lab.  As memory serves me that raft was a double tube and about 16 feet across and if you remember I said my living room was 10 foot.  It all happened in a split second.   There was plenty of CO2 in that cylinder as it turned out.  I could hear the sounds of my wife screaming somewhere and the thumping and bumping sounds of the dog as well as the sound furniture dying.  Bill and I started to laugh which didn’t make the wife happy.  I laughed until the thought crossed my mind that we couldn’t move and this would be an embarrassing way to die.  Bill managed to reach a valve on the side and soon the gas bag began to deflate.  Our dining room table was trashed so we went looking for a wire spool.  I never did take it to the lake.  Now, as I look back, I wonder how I can forget stories like this.

Advertisement

Tags: life rafts, life rafts in a small room