Wayne.B wrote:
On Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:49:56 -0400, Jeff wrote:

Since most un-powered
boats are not registered, its not easy to determine their relative
safety. We'd have to look at hours spent in various types of boats, etc.

There were statistics published sometime in the last couple of years
which showed that deaths in canoes and kayaks were way out of
proportion to their overall numbers. Canoes and kayaks are usually
unregistered of course.

I'd be curious to see the numbers. Canoe deaths were 80 last year, over
10% of the total; while kayak deaths were 34, or 5%. However, Kayak
sales are about 4 times canoes, so there is a discrepancy. The two
together have been selling about half a million a year recently, though
falling off last year. So its quite possible that the number of "paddle
boats" out there are equal to the number of small open power boats (or
at least a significant percentage of them) which were involved in 350
deaths last year.

So I could believe that canoes are responsible for a disproportional
number of deaths, but not kayaks. My hunch is that most kayakers wear
PFDs, but many canoe users are actually fishing and don't think they are
at risk.

Although I often wear a PFD while kayaking, I have trouble convincing my
wife to do so, because we almost always kayak in very protecting
fla****er, often only a few feet deep.