It appears he did not have a raft, but I am sure he will clarify.
I would never fly over water without a raft, and I send mine to SEMS every 2-3 years to be overhauled.
They advise me that raft failures are extremely rare - below 1% chance I gather. However this assumes that it has not been messed with. I once lent mine to a school (for a fly-out to France; they did not even have enough life jackets to go round) and when it came back it was obvious it has been opened, so I had to have it overhauled right away. It's like somebody messing with your parachute, to see what is inside the bag..
I must confess that I often fly across the Channel without wearing a life jacket (they live in a bag in the back) but always have the raft handy. This is probably slightly stupid, but on the airways crossing from DVR to Belgium, say FL150, one is out of glide range for only minutes. However, doing a VFR flight (limited to FL065 or so) to say Caan is something else!
The vast majority of pilots do not have a raft - the cost of ~ £1200 seems too much. But in a jacket, hypothermia will get you within a few hours in the summer, and quicker in the winter.