Have just had our 2 liferafts serviced by Ocean Success in Penang. Overall they were very professional and did a good job with a rapid turn around and reasonable rates by international standards.

I found them very pleasant to work with and was able to specify exactly what equipment I wanted packing into the raft. Replacement items to SOLAS specs (such as flares, food rations and water)standards were readily available at reasonable rates.

Contact Nadya at Ocean Success on _+60331662503
Paul Johnson
SY Asia

The manager of Ocean Success can be a cantankerous old woman. “You don’t have to be here to watch us repack your life raft. Go and come back. What, you don’t trust us?” With that, there was no doubt we would be there to watch each step of the inspection process, especially since she refused to give us a written statement of the charges for the packing and items to be replaced.

She would not photocopy her handwritten information for us nor allow us to photograph the information. For whatever reasons, miscommunications or otherwise, it seems we would have been charged for items in the repacking process that in the end did not get done, like replacing the wire triggering lanyard and the internal visual inspection of the gas inflation bottle.

Because of this, our expected bill was reduced to a total of $175.00 including having one of their employees pick us and the raft up from our marina and taking us to the Ocean Success shop. That one-way trip cost us $20. We took an Uber taxi for the return trip cost us $5.

Only after we were home with our inspected raft did I realize the inspector did not inflate the floor of the raft for inspection. I completely overlooked what should have been the inspectors standard routine.

Of the 4 state licensed life raft inspection stations I have visited in Malaysia, none would qualify for licensing in the United States, New Zealand or Australia and quite possibly many other countries. Nor would these stations qualify for being a service centre for many known brands of rafts used on pleasure boats.

First, the inspection room is not a sealed room with a climate controlled environment. Garage size doors open to the outside allowing ambient tropical temperatures and humidity to contaminate the rubber of the life raft. The inspection area should be a comfortable temperature with low humidity air, sealed from the outside environment.

The second deviation is the air used to inflate the raft for air holding ability is not filtered to remove contaminants and humidity. It should be very clean and dry, like what goes into a SCUBA tank. After deflating, the unfiltered air can adversely affect the integrity of the rubber over time.

Third, the inspection surface is the painted concrete floor which everyone walks on with their shoes. Sand and dirt from the floor will cling to the life raft upon repacking causing abrasion. There was no attention to vacuuming the floor prior to or during the inspection of our raft.

On the positive side, Ocean Success allows the customer to choose what items they want to go back into their raft, unlike in Australia and New Zealand and America. In those countries, the mandatory replacement of loose items and their exorbitant cost structure, can make the purchase of a new raft, rather than repacking, an attractive alternative.

So in the end, like many boat projects, you can’t just blindly turn the project over to a contractor and hope for the best. You have to be an active project manager and keep a watchful eye on the process.