A rescue swimmer can NOT use an inflatable, you are not going anyplace fast. 
They don’t all pin your arms, but I don’t know how to find out except blow the 
thing up. My son had a hybrid inflatable when he was around 4 or 5 and used to 
LOVE to make it blow up. He could still sort of paddle around and his arms were 
free.
On to the greater issue, I have had to do a few MOB recoveries and it is about 
1,000 times harder to get an injured, overweight, frozen, or otherwise 
non-agile person out of the water than you would think before you try it. I 
once had an overweight 60+ year old lady dive off for MOB practice on a hot day 
and I had to tow her back to Annapolis. We had no ladder on the school boat and 
we would have hurt her quite badly trying to haul her up by her arms if we 
could have even done it. Dislocating an arm or breaking a rib looked quite 
likely. You also cannot imagine the teasing I got for towing a 300 pound women 
up Back Creek to Port Annapolis.

Joe
Coquina
From: CnC-List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jim Reinardy 
via CnC-List
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2015 1:53 PM
To: Kevin Driscoll via CnC-List
Cc: Jim Reinardy
Subject: Re: Stus-List - Inflable life jacket with harness recommendation


This is a bit of a tangent, but I wanted to get some feedback on a recent event 
in our marina that has a lot of us talking.



We have some friends that own a cruising boat.  The wife has been a little 
hesitant about sailing in part because of poor swimming ability causing a 
general fear of water.  She decided to confront her fears head on by 
volunteering to do a live person overboard drill.  We got a bunch of people on 
board their boat and enlisted a smaller boat as a chase boat.  She put on an 
inflatable life jacket with an expiring sensor and jumped in the water in the 
harbor.  It was at the end of a stretch of hot weather so there were fewer 
fears about hypothermia and the waves were negligible, which is as good as it 
gets for Lake Michigan.



The PFD inflated immediately and brought her to the surface just fine, but she 
found that the inflated bladder pretty much immobilized her.  She could not 
lift her head properly or move her arms to maneuver to the throwables in the 
water.  One of the people in the chase boat ultimately jumped in to get her 
over to her boat and we got her back up on deck, but it was a more tense 
process than any of us expected.  Our friend confronting her fears was actually 
satisfied with the result, she was able to remain calm and ultimately got back 
on the boat without injury, but it raised some doubts about inflatable PFD’s 
with the rest of us.



Anyone have experience with actually deploying an inflatable PFD?  Were you 
able to maneuver?  Did you need to partially deflate the bladder?



As a side note, we have gone looking for a good quality non-inflatable PFD with 
a harness and crotch strap, which is becoming a requirement for some races now 
and pretty much came up empty at this point.



Thanks,



Jim Reinardy

C&C 30-2 “Firewater”

Milwaukee, WI





Sent from Mail<http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10





From: Kevin Driscoll via CnC-List
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2015 5:08 PM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Cc: Kevin Driscoll
Subject: Re: Stus-List - Inflable life jacket with harness recommendation


My Kong tether has snap shackle for self eject.

On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 11:53 AM Danny Haughey via CnC-List 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
don't forget to sign up for the PYacht email list before you place your order 
and they'll give a 5% off code on a purchase over $100

five bucks is five bucks!


---------- Original Message ----------
From: Indigo via CnC-List <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: Indigo <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: Stus-List - Inflable life jacket with harness recommendation
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2015 08:28:37 -0400
I don't recall - one of the early posts on the subject. At the price of these 
at pyacht I might be tempted to replace my "spare" old style tethers.
--
Jonathan
Indigo C&C 35III
SOUTHPORT CT

On Sep 16, 2015, at 08:03, Frederick G Street via CnC-List 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Mine does.  Which one are you looking at?  I’ve got the “Y” tether with one 
six-foot leg and one three-foot leg; both of those have the positive-action 
carabiners.  The harness end has a snap shackle with a pull-lanyard.  Like 
this: http://www.pyacht.com/cgi-bin/pagegen.pl?pr+kng283sete.htm

— Fred
Fred Street -- Minneapolis
S/V Oceanis (1979 C&C Landfall 38) -- Bayfield, WI

On Sep 15, 2015, at 10:29 PM, Indigo via CnC-List 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I am surprised to see that the Kong tether as illustrated does not have a 
snap-shackle for use at the harness end to enable quick disconnect if needed.  
With any tension, you'd need to cut the tether in order to get free if you 
were, say, trapped under water.
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