Near Perdido (almost Pensacola) this past June a doctor, well-experienced and intelligent boater, disappeared while fishing near the shoreline. His boat was found bumping a bridge piling. Doc was not on board. Body wasn't found. I didn't follow the story for long but I could not help but suspect that he fell over and bumped his head in the fall while not wearing a PFD. Easy to do on one of those fishing boats with a flat deck and no lifelines to get in the way of the fishing.

In the old days (70's-80's) I wore my PFD on my cat when the weather turned sour. Now, I wear it ALL the time for a couple of reasons: (1) my crew cannot sail the boat well enough if something were to happen to me, and (2) things can happen during a tipsy accident that can incapacitate the sailors. The PFD can trap a sailor in a bad place but I'm putting my bet on the thing providing some floatation when my body needs it.

I don't like wearing my PFD because it IS restricting but, just this past weekend I had enough water and wind in the Gulf (Bunces Pass near Tampa) that made me seriously wonder if I could make it back to the pass before the boat pitchpoled.

Perfect days can quickly deteriorate to a point where even a watchful skipper has his hands full and can place the happy sailors in jeapardy if heavy boat parts collide with soft flesh or if all the string ensnares limbs and torsos during a tipover of some sort. Being a good swimmer does not help when the swimmer is knocked silly, becomes tangled in the rigging, or becomes hypothermic.

My VHF, strobe, whistle, and knife are clipped to my PFD. I have a multi-tool strapped to my belt. I don't like wearing all this equipment but I'm still sailing at 54 and plan to be around to tell more tales about the rough times I went through when I was damn glad we were wearing the PFD's with signaling devices clipped to them. I've never had to be rescued from a really bad situation but it doesn't take but one bad spill to change your luck. This past Sunday was kind of a pain that could have grown into a safety nightmare and expensive dilemma. Only on perfect days with a lazy wind and relatively flat water do we bother to relieve ourselves of the bulky PFD/s and even then I keep all the safety things tied onto the boat and well within reach.

My advice is to wear the PFD more often than not and to have some safety equipment on board.