On Oct 20, 2:43*pm, "nom=de=plume" wrote:
Interesting. I'll have to ask my friends about them. We had to wear
lifejackets when we sailed. They were kind of bulky with rips up and down
them, but he had others that he called "offshore" in lockers on the boat.
The nice part about the bulky ones was that they were really warm. I put
mine under my waterproof jacket. I looked like a pumpkin, but I was nice and
toasty.

What do you do between the cockpit and the mast? If the ones you have in the
cockpit are too short to let you go over, how do you get to the mast?

"Frogwatch" wrote in message

...
On Oct 20, 10:01 am, Frogwatch wrote:

They say power boaters have ETAs and sailors have destinations but
this is getting ridiculous.
Got up at 5:00 this morn to go to the coast to have high enough water
to get out for my single handed sail to Carrabelle, was making coffee
and heard a violent retching from the bathroom. My 19 yr old son comes
out saying he's been throwing up all night. Good Lord, sounds like
the flu. He was going to pick me up in Carrabelle because my wife is
too exhausted from her radiation treatments (just finished them) to
drive much. So.......no way to get back and I figure I should stay
home a bit this morn to make sure he is ok so I will not make it to
Carabelle this week it seems. Sometimes life is like that.

Oh, for Nom-de-Plume: *The Sospender auto-inflate life jacket with
built in harness is so comfortable I wear it all the time.
Uninflated, it is fairly flat against the chest and small. *I can wear
it even in very hot weather with no problems. *I have three of them
for adults and two for kids although my kids have outgrown them (I'll
be happy to donate them to somebody with kids under 90 lbs). *They
really do work.
However, according to the coast guard, they count as life preservers
only if they are being worn. *You should also carry regular life
jackets for the times you want to go in the water for some reason,
otherwise the Sospender will inflate.
My tethers are all intended to be attached to a ring bolt in the
cockpit and are too short to allow anybody to actually fall
overboard. *To go forward, I use a shorter tether attached to the
mast.
Until the CO2 cartridges became very expensive, we used to try out the
Sospenders every year by jumping in the water but now we only replace
the dissolving trigger every two years.

--
Nom=de=Plume

Tethered to ring bolt in cockpit, stand up lean over and clip short
tether to eyelets at base of mast, unhook from long tether. Two very
short tethers to both lifelines, unhook from mast tether. Alone, I
have only had to go forward once.
I do not like jacklines because they would allow you to go overboard.
My boarding ladder also has a leash hanging down almost to the water.
From the water, I can pull this leash to pull the ladder down if
somehow I do go overboard. You MUST make sure ladder is always up
when the engine is running, otherwise the leash might foul the prop.
SoSpenders were a way to get the kids to wear lifejackets in the heat
and they worked well.