A couple years back, National Safe Boating council attended the ACA annual meeting. They came to promote the use of inflatable PFDs by kayakers. Just pull the rip cord that activates the air cylinder and the tubes inflate. The pull cord is at waist level. There you are upside down in cold water, extra tight hot shot spray skirt holding tight to the knife edge glass cockpit rim, paddle in your hand. What do ya do? Fish around for the pull cord, drop the paddle and pull the spray skirt, gasp in horror etc.? I took a USCGAUX basic boating course for power boaters over the past month. They showed us an inflatable pfd that fills as soon as it gets wet. A few days ago, a young USCG cadet was participating in a practice mission, feel off a ship's ladder into the water. He was carrying about 60 pounds of gear at the time. Hit the water and disappeared. It seems that the water activated pfd that he had didn't have a gas canister hooked up in it. They recovered his body after a while. I want my pfd to be effective without possibility of failure. I look forward to comments anyone may have about the value of inflatable pfds. I will grant that just as victims are frequently so close to shore that only a pfd is necessary for cold water boaters and that most of the time for the first year or two the owners will be appropriately attentive to inflatable pfd maintenance. I have noticed that a compressed air horn will always work until the day it must work, at which point it ran out of air last time out. Concept of "foolproof" or "fail safe" sticks in my mind. Chuck Sutherland *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Mar 08 2011 - 18:17:16 PST
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