Latest PBO mag, lifejackets who needs them ....

simonfraser said:
"Arrive under sail" article, three chaps on / off boat several times, not a lifejacket to be seen :(

If ever you don yours, surely it's when mooring / in & out dinghy ?
Click to expand...

I think you have answered your own question. It would seem that wearing lifejackets was not a thought uppermost in the minds of the crew on Ben's boat and it would not be in mine. It's a cultural thing I suppose. Younger people have an obsession with perceived safety (my opinion) that is not shared by many of us older ones. I have been berthing yachts for a very long time and I don't ever recall putting on a lifejacket beforehand. I have never fallen in, either. Maybe if I had I would have a different viewpoint.
 
vyv_cox said:
Younger people have an obsession with perceived safety (my opinion) that is not shared by many of us older ones. I have been berthing yachts for a very long time and I don't ever recall putting on a lifejacket beforehand. I have never fallen in, either. Maybe if I had I would have a different viewpoint.
Click to expand...

You could be right. I'm worried by people who seem to be incapable of assessing risk and always wear lifejackets, even in benign millpond river conditions. If they think they're at risk of going overboard in those conditions, they shouldn't be on a boat in the first place.
 
vyv_cox said:
It's a cultural thing I suppose. Younger people have an obsession with perceived safety (my opinion) that is not shared by many of us older ones.
Click to expand...

Not at all sure it's an age thing (unless at 30 I already count as "older" :) ). Possibly a "when did you start sailing" thing. Anyone in the last five years (maybe longer) who got into sailing through an organised school, will probably have been required to wear a lifejacket at all times because it would take a great deal of courage to write anything else in your business risk assessment. So it becomes normal. Those of us who started sailing in the 90s, 80s, or earlier will have been introduced to lifejackets as a precaution you take in rough weather or other adverse conditions. Absent any reason to change, why would we? Change is possible with a good reason - having read of a number of old men falling out of tenders, I generally now do lifejackets or buoyancy aids in dinghies. But not for getting on and off a pontoon. Sorry.

Pete
 
I agree as regards the tender. In the colder waters of northern Europe we always wore LJs in the tender. In Greece we rarely do, the absence of tide and far higher water temperature reduce the risk of anything life-threatening to minimal.
 
I think you also need to consider who else is around

there is no doubt that I am more likely to wear a life jacket if there is no-one around to chuck me something that floats and help me get back aboard

I agree about perception of risk - there do seem to be some very timorous people around

I confess that if I was frightened of falling overboard and did not think that I could stay afloat long enough for some-one to offer a hand then I would move to another sport such as motorcycling, bull riding or hang gliding

I think that the images they use in mags should reflect real life - and watching yachtsmen around the marina or harbour on a warm sunny day then very few of them are wearing life jackets.

I always wear one in the duck punt though primarily because it makes a nice pad for my back and helps to keep me toasty

Dylan
 
I usually take mine off when berthing, easier to move about, if I fall in there is generally assistance nearby, or I can grab hold of the boat or pontoon, and it is a lot easier to climb out of the water without an inflated lifejacket on.
 
I learned to sail with Les Glenans, the French sail-training organisation,, at one of their bases in Ireland. (I'm now for, for my sins, a voluntary instructor with said organisation and would consider safety to be the foremost consideration while sailing). From day one lifejackets were 'de rigeur' with the result that, to me, putting one on is as natural as clipping on a seat belt in a car
I'm constantly amused by the wittering concerning this subject in the UK yachting press, particularly from people who, like myself, are old enough to be aware of their own mortality. The majority of yachting casualties are actually older men. Part of the reason for this is that after we get to a certain age we are less nimble and able to recover from a stumble or overbalancing situation, the conclusion being that the young are relatively safe without life jackets but it's us older ones who really need them!
 
(I'm now for, for my sins, a voluntary instructor with said organisation and would consider safety to be the foremost consideration while sailing).

my number one consideration is pleasure - crazy I know but then I am not a trainer, have no qualifications and do not expect to earn a living from sailing

and I am sure that you are dead right that most of the casualities are old blokes

but then most of the sailors I see are old blokes
 
dylanwinter said:
I think that the images they use in mags should reflect real life
Click to expand...

+1 - and this is the real point. There are some people (Simon may be one of them, it's not clear, but others have said so specifically) who think it's the magazine's job to "set a good example" and only ever print pictures in which everybody is wearing all the approved safety gear. That's not exactly the same thing as censorship, but it tweaks the same bit of my brain.

Pete
 
I think it is the differing attitude between cruisers and dinghies. When I was young and went dinghy racing I always wore a buoyancy aid. No matter what the conditions. I did not feel properly dressed without one. So did everybody else. When I got older and fatter I moved on to keelboats and now very rarely wear a lifejacket or buoyancy aid, although some of my crew always wear one. Mind you, when I race on a Dragon I alway wear a buoyancy aid, not a Lifejacket.
I think its a comfort thing as much as anything else, a dinghy buoyancy aid is light and comfortable whereas a lifejacket is quite heavy and rubs round your neck, catches on things and is a real nuisance to wear.
Also its the macho "I don't need one of those" attitude. On the cruiser I feel a bit of a pansy wearing a LJ when its shorts and t-shirt weather.
 
Reading this, its reminds about the argument over whether you need a helmet on a Motorbike. The answer is no unless you fall off and hit your head on something. So as long as you never do that, no need to wear a helmet. The problem is you just don't know and cannot predict what might happen in any circumstance, so the only approach is to evauate the risk and then act as you see fit. When to wear a LJ - well, for me a as relatively new boater in the UK (last 10 years) I can see equal chances of a slip into the drink in any number of situations. Bimbling into a Marina, scrambling into a tender or out in the lumpy stuff. As others have said, any training quickly convinces you to wear one rather than not, so I do not put to Sea unless I have one on. If you have ever dived in the Sea around the UK (appreciate the Med would be different) its the thermal shock that convinces me - it can genuinely disable you, thus why I wear one. But, the other month, I was out crewing coastally (f4) with some racers and I was the only one wearing one! Their view was each man for himself and "don't fall off"
 
smth448 said:
I think it is the differing attitude between cruisers and dinghies. When I was young and went dinghy racing I always wore a buoyancy aid. No matter what the conditions. I did not feel properly dressed without one. So did everybody else. When I got older and fatter I moved on to keelboats and now very rarely wear a lifejacket or buoyancy aid, although some of my crew always wear one. Mind you, when I race on a Dragon I alway wear a buoyancy aid, not a Lifejacket.
I think its a comfort thing as much as anything else, a dinghy buoyancy aid is light and comfortable whereas a lifejacket is quite heavy and rubs round your neck, catches on things and is a real nuisance to wear.
Also its the macho "I don't need one of those" attitude. On the cruiser I feel a bit of a pansy wearing a LJ when its shorts and t-shirt weather.
Click to expand...

I think people who come from dinghies (racing or otherwise) are simply used to wearing a buoyancy aid of some description, and find no problem wearing an automatic jacket while on bigger boats. I always wear a LJ while under way, and doing dinghy transfers, and anybody on board does the same. In the Med we relax a bit, but in Scottish waters it is basically always cold, so were you unlucky enough to go over , keeping your head out the water is well worth while.
Working in the offshore oil&gas business, you simply cannot take undue risks, and that feeds back into normal life to some extent. Decent hamar jackets need not be bulky or really heavy.
My son sails as bow man racing bigger boats, and sees no problem standing on the pulpit rails messing with a spinnaker pole, sans jacket. Ah.. the indestructible nature of youth. :rolleyes:
Nobody has ever made any cynical comments about jackets being worn (other than said son..), and I'd just tell them where to go !

Skipper's rules full stop. :cool:

Graeme
 
pagoda said:
I think people who come from dinghies (racing or otherwise) are simply used to wearing a buoyancy aid of some description, and find no problem wearing an automatic jacket while on bigger boats.
Click to expand...

We competed in canoes for years, where a buoyancy aid was always worn, then raced dinghies for more than ten years, ditto. I don't see the situation on a cruising yacht as being similar but as said earlier I always wore one in the tender in cold waters.
 
Spirit of Glenans said:
... to me, putting one on is as natural as clipping on a seat belt in a car QUOTE]

I'm trying to get to that point, but not succeeding very well.

If it's bad enough that I "need" my lifejacket, I'll want to be clipped on, so I'm less likely to go for an unexpected swim than in more benign conditions, when "there's no need to hold on", but all it takes is a bit of wake at the wrong moment.

TBH, all the "It's my right not to wear an LJ" comments rather reminds me of the similar ones about seat belts and crash helmets - even to the scenarios where wearing one is more dangerous than not. Some of those scenarios are even true, just as I am sure that there are people dead who would have been alive if they hadn't had a seat belt. No system's perfect, we just have to play the odds, and personally, I'm quite happy that in 99+% of the scenarios that end up with me going for an involuntary swim, a jacket will do more good than harm.

Having said that, I'm absolutely against compulsion. To be effective, a law would involve wearing the damn things walking along the canal towpath and (especially) going down the pontoon on the way back from the pub. What we'd actually get would be a law that would cause the maximum inconvenience for the minimum of safety.

Fred Drift:

I recently looked at the guest lifejackets on a friend's boat. They, like the boat, were new in 2006 and I'm pretty sure some of them had never been out of their bags. I doubt if any of the six would have inflated in an emergency, as every gas bottle was loose. The actuators had been expired longer than they had been in date, but that didn't matter that much as I tried a few out after I'd replaced them and they all went pop a second after they got wet in a most satisfying way.

I suspect the bottles hadn't been tightened properly when they were assembled, so the moral of the story is, please check your jackets even if they're new - it could save your life or that of a loved one.
Click to expand...
 
OK, so no lifejackets were to be seen in the photos, but what worried me as much was that the crew could be seen to be jumping from the bow to the pontoon! Now, if my crew are stepping from the hounds to the pontoon, I'm not too worried about it, but I wouldn't let them try that jump - one small error and your head hits the edge of the pontoon. I'm sure many of us have completed similar manouvres (often not from choice) but my preference is to risk a scar along the topsides rather than have the crew take a leap.

Rob.
 
The answer is to wear one when the risk warrants it.

I doubt whether any of the "wear it all the time" exponents wear one all the time when anchored or tied up in the marina - is the risk any worse when coming alongside than it is when getting off the boat the next morning to go to the showers? What next everyone wears one when sat in the cockpit for the evening meal?
 
l'escargot said:
is the risk any worse when coming alongside than it is when getting off the boat the next morning to go to the showers? What next everyone wears one when sat in the cockpit for the evening meal?
Click to expand...

The nice people at the Cowes lifeboat once lent me a spanner to help refit the steering wheel on my mate's decrepit (and embarrassingly tool-deficient) motorboat. The guy who came to help had to put his lifejacket on before he could set foot on Trinity Landing ( http://www.cowesharbourmoorings.co.uk/images/photo/622029.jpg , for the non-locals) - presumably that's the RNLI's rules. If he needed a jacket to carry a spanner, I'm sure a towel or a knife and fork would warrant the same precautions :p

Pete
 
prv said:
The nice people at the Cowes lifeboat once lent me a spanner to help refit the steering wheel on my mate's decrepit (and embarrassingly tool-deficient) motorboat. The guy who came to help had to put his lifejacket on before he could set foot on Trinity Landing ( http://www.cowesharbourmoorings.co.uk/images/photo/622029.jpg , for the non-locals) - presumably that's the RNLI's rules. If he needed a jacket to carry a spanner, I'm sure a towel or a knife and fork would warrant the same precautions :p

Pete
Click to expand...

I would love to see the risk assessment - reminds me of the time I had to do a risk assessment for someone who had fallen out of bed and make recommendations for preventing a re occurrence...:eek:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top