STATIC POOL TESTING

The first time we tried out the life jackets was in a static pool. Four “victims” wore each of the jackets (fully inflated from the beginning) while two testers measured their freeboard or distance above the water, their face angle, and the jacket’s ability to turn the swimmer face up.

We assumed that the jackets with the largest cylinders would give the most freeboard, but when it came to measuring, the Mustang 33’s square shape kept the wearer’s face the highest at 6.9 inches with all the other models clustering around the 5- 5.7 inch mark.

The face angle of the wearer varied considerably from jacket to jacket, and also according to body type. Interestingly, the jackets with the smallest bladders kept the wearers most horizontal, with the Stearns 16 coming as flat as 5 degrees for our most lightweight wearer and 28 degrees for the heaviest. In contrast, the SeaPro25, Stearns 25, and SoSpenders 38 had average face angles of 77-80 degrees, nearly upright.

When testing if jackets would turn an unconscious victim face up, we found that all did in about five seconds, except in one case. The Stearns 16, with its unusual “sausage shaped” design, failed to turn the 225 pound tester over at all. We also put Type II and Type III jackets to the same test. The Type IIs, which claim to turn unconscious victims over some of the time, only turned two victims over. The Type IIIs, which are not designed to turn an unconscious victim face-up at all, failed to turn any of the victims over at all. So clearly, the inflatables performed better in this testing than the Type II and III inherently buoyant jackets.