We were lenient about the waist straps, and having it zipped all way up. We required our students to wear a life jacket at all times in the canoes, with the zipper engaged. If worn properly (snug) they tend to be about as warm as quilted flannel shirt - not a win on a hot day. They will float you upright, but if you are unconscious, your face may fall into the water. Better ones have straps on the sides to resize the vest to fit snugly, making it more difficult to lose, as well as warmer in the water. Cheap ones are a simple zip up and a waist strap. The 2nd tier are essentially a vest with foam strips instead of dacron quilting. You get an interesting tan pattern from them. OTOH they are very nice between you and a gunwale when portaging a heavy freighter canoe. The shoulder yoke interferes with a proper paddling stroke. This is what you find in the lockers on ferries and passsenger ships. The classic design is the "Key hole" design. The best ones have sufficient floatation around the neck, and enough more flotation on the front compared to the back, than an unconscious victim is naturally rotated onto his back with is face out of the water. Kayakers commonly use type III PFDs, which are often not designed to keep an unconscious person face-up. It's also possible that hypothermia first led to exhaustion and/or loss of consciousness (probably within 30-60 minutes in those temperatures), which could well put the victims in one of the categories mentioned in Charlie Brumbaugh's answer: ‘unconscious or otherwise unable to keep his/her face out of the water’. Considering that the deceased were all in their sixties, the lower end of this range seems more probable in this case. The NY Post article mentions a water temperature of 9☌, corresponding to an expected survival time of 1-3 hours for the two victims found in the water. At the time of writing, hypothermia seems more likely than drowning - especially in the case of the victim who was found on top of an ice floe rather than in the water. DW mentions that they were not wearing any protection against cold water. In the specific case you mention, both the NY Post and Deutsche Welle say that the cause of death is still being investigated, and both of them point out the low water temperature (the victims were kayaking in a glacier lake). The other killer if you fall off a boat in the ocean is hypothermia. Of course you are way better off wearing a life jacket but it won't prevent you from drowning in all cases. Numerous mouth immersions over a prolonged period of time.īy CDR Kim Pickens, U. Otherwise unable to keep his/her face out of the water, or eventually drowns from Either theīoater is unable to free him- or herself from some type of entrapment, is unconscious or Those are the primary reasons boaters wearing life jackets sometimes drown. They been wearing a life jacket before the mishap occurred.īut, you ask, what happened to the other 20%, the ones who were wearing life jackets, We know from other data that most of those victims could have been saved had Our data also show that over 80% of drowning victims were NOT wearing life jackets whenįound. Life jackets do not make one drownproof, just increase your odds significantly.
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