Wearing your Life Vests

[EricG]

Based on a thread on the other board, and the discussion that comes up every time there is a boating accident, I'm curious how many of us wear our vests and how often?

We wear ours every time we get the boat on plane. I figure I may still get hurt if there is an accident, but at least I'm giving myself a chance.

What about you?

EG
-yup, I wear my helmet and some sort of protective gear every time I ride too(every day)... :umbrella:

[Lenny]

I love my Lifeline. It makes me comfortable when thinking about skipping along the surface watching for the 18 to come and see me :eek:

I ALWAYS wear it. These things are not like a "cruiser" or Whaler.

I think you can get in trouble in these boats with a touch of stupidity... :yes:

[BigGrizzly]

I always weare one

[Jraysray]

Gotta admit, just me and the wife no. Family, alway's. Looks like I need to rethink this. I know this guy that has a huge scar chest to stomach. Got thrown from a boat and snagged something on the way out. Bet a vest could have helped in that situation.

[Sam]

Right on Eric ! I wear mine 99.9% of the time. For those who have never been tossed out of a boat consider your selves lucky. It happend to me when I was racing hydro's as a kid. Granted that was not a spin around the lake but it can happen any time any where. Combine a toss out of the boat, a bump on the head and the shock of cold water and your asking for trouble. Besides their great for some unusual tan lines :biggrin.: .

Sam

[onesubdrvr]

Gotta admit, just me and the wife no. Family, alway's. Looks like I need to rethink this. I know this guy that has a huge scar chest to stomach. Got thrown from a boat and snagged something on the way out. Bet a vest could have helped in that situation.
I agree, I need to re-think

Example - Jacksonville AngelAid Poker Run, none of us in my boat (4) wore one, now I don't have the fastest boat (60mph), but really, let's face it, anything above 30 can be dangerous, ESPECIALLY given the nature of the river that day. I'll admit, I probably never will in the idle / low speed zones, but I really should re-think when getting out into the open.

Wayne

[MOP]

In any boat a vest is just good sense, I have seen guys fall overboard standing still while fishing.

Phil

[Ed Donnelly]

Vest goes on before I get on the boat. Gets taken off after I get off the boat
I have a simple policy no vest,no ride.........Ed

[Fish boy]

Went with sometimes...
almost always when driving the stv, never when driving the donzi.

BTW, it would be interesting to add to the poll who uses kill switches?? Always with the stv, most of the time with the donzi. falling out of your boat and staying afloat is only half the battle, sepecially when the motor torgue turns the motor, the boat circles, and you are bobbing in your PFD right in your boats path. Then again, no motor torque and it driving away without you would suck too.

[Cuda]

Yep, I did a kill switch check with Fish when we were on the river Saturday.

[Fish boy]

In any boat a vest is just good sense, I have seen guys fall overboard standing still while fishing.

Phil

been there done that... got into a school of buzzes and caught a big one :biggrin: :jestera:

[roadtrip se]

whether we are flirting with 80 or cruising at 40-50.

Something else to think about. A full jacket protects your rib cage in case of an impact with the windshield, something else in the boat, or in the worst case, you go swimming.

I'm not quite sure what the little ribbon CO2 blow up jobbies do for you in terms of protection other than float you to the top AFTER everything has already happened.

We even went the extra mile and had our lifelines trimmed in kevlar like a flak jacket.

Good insurance policy..

RT

[gold-n-rod]

In the 16, all riders and the driver wear them and I connect the kill switch to my vest. In the big boat, only kids under 12 are required to wear. I don't wear one due to the huge freeboard, bolster seats and limited top speed..... not that it makes it right, I just don't.

[Formula Jr]

I wear mine all the time for three specific reasons:

I'm the captain - usually, and if I'm going to ask other people to wear one
then I should be wearing one also. Especially if there are kids aboard who have to wear one all the time anyway. That way kids feel just like the adults and they tend to behave better.

As the Captain, I also am bound to render assistance if I see trouble in the water, be that a swimmer or another boater, and I can't swim as well as I use to. If you have ever tried to help another person who has panicked in the water, you know the first thing they will try to do is climb on you to get air. Thats why you hear so many stories about would be rescue-ers that drown also. The vest will keep both of you up at least long enough to calm the other person down.

It makes a statment that you are a seasoned performance boater. Its code that you like to run fast and fly high.

[Pismo]

I have to play devil's advocate....I never wear a vest and nobody I know ever wears a vest unless skiing/tubing/sail boarding/etc, then again I rarely go over 35mph and usually only go out on calm, clear days(not nights) on a relatively small lake (if uninjured I could easily swim to shore from any point). If I were on the ocean wave hopping at 75mph I might think otherwise. I never see anyone wear a vest on the lake I boat on, only kids(sometimes) and boat rental customers from very far inland.

[Lenny]

... then again I rarely go over 35mph and usually only go out on calm, clear days ...

so, where do you get the 75 GPS from ??? :D :D :D

[JimG]

In the Donzi, almost never. In the Thoroughbred, only if conditions warrant it.

Kill Switch - ALWAYS!

[Sport]

If it's just me then "no" if I'm in the ICW. If I'm out in the Gulf alone then "yes". The kids (13,12 & 8) always and there is always an argument about it "we're not babies anymore" and their Mother isn't a big help with this issue. Maybe if I found some PFD's made by Gucci life would be easier for me.

Sport !

[kjly63]

:yes: kill switch attached to the auto-inflator mini vest almost always. My girls 8 & 10 wear theirs.........how do you explain to them that your exempt from safety. Anyhow, although my 33 yr old boat has been completely redone; anything can go wrong........not only your boat but maybe some yahoo who's either all boozed up or simply has their head up their ass and has no clue behind the wheel:splat:

Kenny

[Lenny]

Kily, speaking of "Head up the ass", I was at the gas dock on Sunday. I had two girls with me, (daughter and a friend, 9-8) and I had just finished filling up and tightening down the filler. My kids came back down from the washroom, (of course :rolleyes: ) and got in the boat. Another fella was somewhere else, I have no idea where. Just then, I see beside me, a 36' Uniflite, (nice light blue like mine mind you) heading out of his slip, straight at me at the dock and going to broadside me. :eek: I scream at the girls to get out of boat NOW !!!. They jump back up onto the dock, kinda panicked, as was I, and then I jumped up onto the bow. I grabbed the Uniflites starboard sheer and pushed SOOOOO $ucking hard against it. It missed by about 1/2" as it passed and quickly turned to port. There was the pilot on the bridge, and "someone" watching all this transpire at the swin grid on the transom.

Man, was that ever a $uck-up. It would have broken the boat in half. I yelled to the guy, "What the -uck is wrong with you? " A women standing on the slip where it left yells back at me, "We just bought it :D , (yippee :rolleyes: ) This is our first power boat ! ( twin screw to boot, what a navigational idiot :rolleyes: ) "We have always had Sailboats" ... I couldn't believe it.

Anyone who has driven twin screws knows that there is a lot more going on to navigating with them and close quarter manuvering than meets the eye.

SO, yes to the lifejacket, and YES, as you stated Kily, there are a LOT of people with a LOT of money and not even the slightest idea of what they are doing. This could easily have put me, my kids, in the water. Let alone trying to find another "X" here :(

Kill switch also, everytime, no matter what.

[bertsboat]

Words like LUCK and STUPIDTY scare me. It should scare you too.
Bert

[Ghost]

I love my Lifeline. It makes me comfortable when thinking about skipping along the surface watching for the 18 to come and see me :eek:

I ALWAYS wear it. These things are not like a "cruiser" or Whaler.

I think you can get in trouble in these boats with a touch of stupidity... :yes:

I think a lot of useful thinking is in, and implied by the quoted post above. Reading the different responses (and the divergence of opinion) suggests some notion of context is at times missing. A small, fast Donzi is not like a lot of other boats. And there is a lot of variation in just how fast they are. And different people drive them different ways.

As I read the answers here, I suspect some people are answering with different contexts assumed but not explained, making for answers that are probably less different than they appear. (Many others provided context, making their thinking much more understandable.)

All safety management is a matter of probabilities. To say it is crazy to step aboard any pleasure boat under any circumstance and not don a lifejacket is absurd. Anyone with that mentality is just bad at math. If that level of probability of harm is unacceptable to someone, such a person should never have anything to do with a *pleasure* boat. It is simply an unnecessary risk. Likewise, this person should be wearing a crash helmet in his car. (That is, if he ever left his basement for anything but a necessity, for fear of being swept away by a tornado. Etc.) By the way, for clarity, I am NOT saying someone who always wears a lifejacket is an idiot. If someone doesn't see any inconvenience in it, there's not much to weigh in the cost/benefit analysis and it makes sense to wear it all the time. What I am saying is that for people who see a HUGE inconvenience/discomfort in it, there is plenty of context to consider, and there are right and wrong times to put on a vest, depending on the type of boat, conditions, type of driving, how many aboard, etc.

That said, in general I think the math on kill switches (inconvenience weighed against benefit) provides a bit less need for context. Kill switches provide a ton of benefit for relatively little inconvenience. Again, not always needed, but if you have them, it's probably a good habit to use them a very high percentage of the time.