Whatever Floats Your Body

We’ve all been there. The lake is calm. The water is warm. The sun is hot. And the lifejacket is leaving tanlines. It’s tempting to take it off, but then a little voice chirps: Transport Canada says 80 per cent of people who drown while boating aren’t wearing a lifejacket or personal flotation device (PFD).

“A lot of people have a false sense of security,” says Mark Anderson, the director of engineering for Mustang Survival, a survival gear manufacturer in B.C. “They think, I swim well, or It won’t happen to me. But when things go wrong, it doesn’t take long to get into trouble.”

Canadian law only requires that a watercraft have enough lifejackets or PFDs for all the people onboard and that they fit properly (an adult-sized PFD