Re: [Paddlewise] PFDs

Hi Craig,

I'm an ALWAYS guy, and most of the experienced paddlers here are as well. We
normally paddle in warm water - even in the 90's, which is quite strange,
paddling in the Gulf of Mexico and the water actually feeling hot. No
question where the hurricanes come from.

There's a few who can't be bothered, but we work on them by making wearing
them the accepted thing to do. All the "cool" paddlers wear them all the
time. Hopefully that helps.

When we have rescue practice, we'll sometimes ask one of the non-wearers to
please stow their life jacket as the normally do and could they please wet
exit and put it on for us? I have not seen one succeed in a pool, never mind
in conditions. I always wear my skirt too, but my wife isn't so regular.
Once we were on a coastal clean-up and she left with the skirt in the
cockpit "so I can put it on if the wind picks up" or something. Well the
wind came up and we had to paddle into a canal a fair ways before the water
was calm enough to get the job done.

And every time one of the locals takes an unexpected swim we publicize it
within the club, life jacket or not. The most common thing is to drift over
a manatee who isn't aware of your presence and when they do notice the large
thing above them they take off like a shot. The taking off results in an
eruption of water that will lift a paddler six to eighteen inches, and makes
stability iffy. One guy in a plastic boat had the boat bend at the cockpit
and got bruises where the deck pinched his legs against the bottom off the
hull. Think bending a straw and the straw collapses.

Then there are other things that can happen like heart attacks, strokes and
seizures that can't be predicted. Nice to have some flotation if that
happens. You can be sure the heart attack will happen when you are fighting
the wind and seas trying to make safe harbor in a thunderstorm with 70 mph
gusts. Or boat wakes can be a surprise sometimes, or a jumping mullet smacks
you in the face (don't laugh, I've seen it happen!)

Why not wear it? Comfort? If you want to be comfortable, stay in your
Lay-Z-Boy. Too hot? It actually keeps the sun off of you and coupled with a
spray skirt I feel it keeps me from overheating here in the summer. Not a
problem in the Pacific NW I'm sure, but if you are warm up there, I'm sure
there's a lot of nice cool water around to cool off in with a roll or just
hang on someone's bow. That doesn't work too well here in August when the
gulf is in the 90's. That's the only time I came close to overheating. And
had I fainted without the pfd...

The most effective argument seems to be "I understand that it is your right
to wear a PFD or not, but when we paddle together we are responsible for
each other's life. By not wearing one you make that more difficult for me
and I am not comfortable unless you are wearing your PFD."  If you are going
out solo, try asking your wife if you should wear it or not.

That's my take on it. but I'm not going to say there's never an exception. I
heard someone here argue that in a certain situation, I don't recall if it
was surfing or rock gardening, they felt the PFD was a liability, or it
increased their risk of a poor outcome should something happen. If they
convince me that we are following the course of less risk, then fine, let's
go!

 Best,

Carey

On Sat, Jan 2, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Craig Jungers <crjungers_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok... they want us to call them "lifejackets" again. After finally getting
> us to use PFD it changes. (sigh)
>
> No one can read all the kayak blogs out there but anyone can read
> www.paddlingplanet.com which is a clever compendium of blogs and resources
> about paddling. Mine is there along with probably 60 or 70 others (they're
> listed in a sidebar). Paddling Planet uses a web search bot to check the
> blogs for recent entries and then scoops them up and loads them into the
> main page of www.paddlingplanet.com. This is not technically very
> difficult to do but it's done very well.

-- 
http://parkswhistles.com/
http://www.facebook.com/carey.parks
http://twitter.com/LuthierCarey
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