Belt Pack Inflatables Report for Duty

In the fall of 2003, as part of the Foundation Findings research and testing series, the BoatU.S. Foundation undertook extensive testing on the wearability and usability of belt pack inflatable life jackets. We looked at all of the U.S. Coast Guard-approved belt pack inflatable models on the market at the time of testing (excluding hybrids), including six manual inflation models and one automatic. Since that time, several of the models we worked with have been discontinued (see these noted in the Spec Chart), and several new models are on their way to the marketplace.

In Part I of this series (Foundation Findings #37), we wanted to find out if regular boaters could handle the care and maintenance of this innovative technology, so we took the belt packs home, repacked and rearmed them, and treated them like our own.

In Part II (Foundation Findings #38) we took to the water to see how the jackets would perform in real life scenarios. In both a static pool and a wave pool, our testers tried out the jackets through a series of simple tests, while staff made notes and observations, and the victims reported on how they felt.