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[quote=wlrottge]First, I agree with the suggestions about the short waisted vests for kayaking, but I think that the performance sailing specific PFD's have come a long way in the last couple of years, so don't rule them out.

The answer for me varies depending on the race/conditions.  Round the cans and short inland distance races I [b]LOVE [/b]my Zhik vest.... yes, I have an older one that isn't USCG approved, but it's very comfortable and super clean so it doesn't hang up on anything.  Only complaint is the pocket; yeah, it's huge, but only has a velcro closure and no way to organize/segregate items.

For longer distance races where we go more than a mile or two offshore, I wear a Kokatat MSFit Tour.  It's nice and short, fits close to the body and has plenty of pockets (you never have enough on a distance race though).  Biggest problem is that it has quite a few exposed buckles that can and do snag occasionally.

To complicate things, I've sailed with a big name cat sailor who will NOT wear a typical PFD and only wears inflatables.  MN3 is a bit wrong b/c not all of them are equipped with auto inflate; the one he wore when I sailed with him certainly wasn't (we had a high speed double trap pitchpole with the kite up).  The belief is that the flotation is a liability if you get tangled up.  There's at least one case of a cat sailor drowning when he got tangled in a flip and his vest kept him from getting free b/c it was pulling him up against the obstruction he was caught on.

Personally, I disagree with that line of thought (risk frequency and severity), but we're all free to make those choices for ourselves.  I've had too many hard flips or taken big hits where if things went a little differently, I could have been knocked out to use a manual inflation PFD.<em>Edited by wlrottge on Dec 02, 2019 - 05:44 PM.</em> [/quote]

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