When in Doubt, Wear It Out 
An Essay by Doug Simpson, © 2000, All Rights Reserved.

    The tragedy a few years back in San Francisco leading to the death of prominent sailor Larry Klein underscores the value of life jackets. One of those clumsy, cheap, orange, nerdy-looking PFDs saved my life once years ago. This story may help save a life somewhere down the road.

I had just turned 13 that winter. After my dad had endured months of pestering, he bought me and my older brother a 12-foot Butterfly sailboat—and on Mother's Day no less. Unable to wait for warmer weather to take the new boat sailing, my brother and I wanted to take the boat out that day. Early May in Wisconsin generally isn't warm, and this particular 47-degree day was no exception. The ice had been gone from the lake for a few weeks, but the water was still frigid. The sky was gray. We wore jeans and many other layers of clothing to protect ourselves from the howling wind.

Being teenagers, we knew everything—including how to swim. But because we still were young teenagers, we actually listened to our insistent parents, reluctantly donning those bulky, kapok-filled, Type II life jackets. There was nobody around to see that we looked goofy. We shoved off onto the lake.

Although we had sailed big boats in the past, that day my brother and I experienced the best of scow sailing for the first time. Immediately the boat was planing—it literally hummed. We were having lots of fun on our shakedown sail, but eventually we had to head back in. We were screaming along on a reach, then decided to gybe over to get back home. Right when we were midway through the gybe—a dangerous maneuver in high winds—the mainsheet jammed on a nut that stuck out the side of the tiller, instantly slamming the helm hard over. With lightning speed we spun through both a gybe and a tack. Unable to react quickly enough, my brother and I were caught with all our weight to leeward. The boat capsized and we immediately ended up in the drink.

My brother wasn’t totally doused and was able to clamber up out of the water as the boat went over. Not so lucky, I ended up in the water a couple of arms' lengths from the boat.

Right away I was choking. I thought the life jacket's upper string tie was strangling me. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't get any air. My arms were frozen to my life jacket's upper string as I desperately clawed to free my neck of the death grip I thought the jacket had on me.

But then I realized that the jacket and its ties were nowhere near my neck. Nothing was choking me—except the cold.

My brother screamed for me to extend my arm to him so he could get me out of the water and back onto the boat. I heard him loud and clear, but I couldn't move my arms. He screamed again and again. I commanded my arms to move. They wouldn't budge. Rigormortis had set in already, it seemed.

I tried to tell him what was happening. But I couldn't talk. I had no air with which to speak. I could only moan that sickening kind of moan like when the wind has been knocked out of you.

My brother desperately yelled at me to kick my legs and paddle over to the boat. But I was paralyzed and, I'm told, was turning blue before his very eyes—like the scene of dead people floating around in the Titanic movie.

This obviously was not a good situation. I'd be dead from suffocation by the time my body drifted ashore. And I was a good swimmer—not to mention a teenager who knew everything.

Summoning courage from the depths of his being, my brother somehow climbed part-way into the shockingly cold water and close enough to drag me toward him. He then heaved me up onto the overturned boat. Only then did I regain some muscle control.

Apparently my dad, who'd been watching, aghast, from shore, commandeered a stray rowboat nearby and earned a world's record rowing it out to get us. He was going so fast he could have towed a skier. With one of his powerful pumps on the oars, he broke an oarlock and then was down to one oar, fighting the wind all the way. He made it to us, and we clambered into the rowboat.

We finally made it to shore—miraculously living to tell the hair-raising tale. I scared myself on the way into the hot shower when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror: I was blue.

You've probably read about hypothermia. Graphs show how long humans—absent the shock I apparently suffered—can function in various water temperatures. Most people, like I did, probably assume that once overboard and in the water, they'll have enough time to yell for attention, to get back aboard and out of the water. They assume that they can tread water, forever if need be, until help arrives. Lots of people know that they are good swimmers and know they can save themselves when the time comes.

We've probably all sailed in marginal conditions without life jackets. After all, the jackets are for wimps, right? But how well can people swim when they're unconscious, or they can't breathe, or their arms don't work?

I've seen a broken mainsheet block let go the boom, flattening crew members while trying to send them overboard to finish them off. How well can people swim with a broken leg? Aboard Magic, one of Dennis Conner's 12 meters in 1982, I saw the mainsail ripped from leech to luff, so the unsupported, very heavy boom dropped onto a crewmember and tossed him overboard.

Should life jackets always be worn when sailors go out, or should rules be made to require it? I don't think so. But I know that you might not get a second chance to put one on. Once you've fallen overboard, it's too late. What conditions warrant the use of lifejackets when out on the water? Everybody has a different opinion.