Readers Poll: Boat is sinking. Don SCUBA or Life Vest?

Dive boat is sinking. You have SCUBA gear ready. Do you use it or a Life Vest?

  • Use my SCUBA gear and jump off.

    Votes: 50 60.2%
  • Use the Life Jacket and leave my gear behind to sink with the boat.

    Votes: 3 3.6%
  • Use Life Vest but take my mask, fins and snorkel with me into the water.

    Votes: 24 28.9%
  • Do whatever the captain says even if I don't agree with him.

    Votes: 3 3.6%
  • Go down with the ship.

    Votes: 1 1.2%
  • Hope the life raft deploys and get in it

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Argue with the captain about what the best thing to do is.

    Votes: 2 2.4%

  • Total voters
    83

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Shaka Doug

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Location
Kihei, Maui, Hawaii 96753, middle of the 808!
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With the recent sinking of a dive boat here on Maui, the question came up of whether it was smarter to put on your dive gear or use the life jacket. There are good arguments for either answer so I thought it would be fun to se how you guys think. Please participate in this poll and share your thoughts. In a life and death situation there are usually some options. Some are better than others. Sometimes you get lucky. The desired outcome is survival with minimal or no injury or loss of property. So what would you do?
 
Dive gear is generally right at hand; lifejacket are almost always stowed. The one account I read, some years back, of the sinking of a British dive boat, said that, once the process began, it proceeded frighteningly fast. I think I'd go for my dive gear -- flotation, a gas supply, and my emergency signaling equipment, too.
 
Life vest. It's designed and tested for exactly this purpose. I'd better trust a life vest to keep me floating (i.e. not deflate) and keep my face out of the water even if I were unconcious or asleep.
Reading about the recent incident made me think once again that I really need to get an automatcally inflating vest and actually start wearing it, just like the other boaters do (and around here it seems they really do).
 
By law, in the United States, the life jackets must be able to float free as the boat sinks. That doesn't mean some dumbass won't figure out how to circumvent the rules, but the idea is that you won't have to grab either, the life jackets will be there for you to grab as the boat sinks.
 
By law, in the United States, the life jackets must be able to float free as the boat sinks. That doesn't mean some dumbass won't figure out how to circumvent the rules, but the idea is that you won't have to grab either, the life jackets will be there for you to grab as the boat sinks.

In that case I would probably put on my gear on the boat and wait, totally inflated with the reg in my mouth, for the boat to sink while exiting the safest way possible. After the boat had sunk and I was safely in the water I would grab a life jacket as a second buoyancy device. I'd like to think that this is 100% based on what I think is safest, but being a poor college student currently my dive gear is 99% of my total assets and I don't think I could watch it all sink in the heat of the moment without attempting to save it.


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---------- Post added July 20th, 2014 at 08:18 PM ----------

So grab my gear first and after the boat sinks, grab a life vest too!

Yup agreed


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I know what condition my scuba gear is in. Not so sure about some random life vest.
 
I'm with Akimbo on this, get the thermal protection if immediately available and add as much other safety gear as possible. It's survival time. I selected grab scuba gear but some of it is excess baggage in that situation, unless it is shallow and a wreck dive might be advantageous for long term survival.



Bob
----------------------
I may be old, but I'm not dead yet.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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