Last week, we posted a video on our Facebook page of a 13-year-old sailor at the helm of the Santa Cruz 50 Deception, which was about 250 miles away from Oahu. The sailor was barefoot and wearing shorts and a T-shirt … and no PFD. Half of the comments on the post respectfully pointed out this fact.

“I hate to be that person but this seems incredibly irresponsible,” said one commenter. “Maybe I’m weird, but I always wear a PFD when I’m on my boat and away from the dock,” said another. As a Latitude editor, you could see this coming from a mile away — it is a standard reaction anytime someone is lifejacket-less.

And fair enough. Who could argue against safety? It is the official policy of Latitude Media LLC (assuming we had any “official policies”) to advocate for sailors to wear their lifejackets and to be as safe as possible at all times. But sometimes, despite our and everyone’s best efforts, sailors don’t wear lifejackets — myself included.

Is it anyone’s business whether someone else does or doesn’t wear a lifejacket on their boat? What’s the balance between encouraging safe habits and taking to the internet to reprimand people for not behaving how we’d like them to?

Here are a few times the safety discussion has felt a little out of balance: When Top Gun: Maverick came out last year, we were delighted to see Rufus Sjoberg’s J/125 Rufless featured in a scene on the Bay. We posted this picture:

You know what’s coming, right?

“The Top Gun: Maverick sailing scene was exciting to watch, however it would have been even better with Tom Cruise wearing his life jacket outside his T-shirt and Jennifer Connelly wearing a tethered lifejacket and parka at the helm,” read one comment. (And a parka? Now we’re giving fashion advice?) “Couldn’t they at least wear inflatable PFD’s?” read another.

To what extent do we expect other people to reflect our ideals of safety? Does anyone honestly expect Hollywood to be responsible stewards of seamanship, among other presumed safety standards? (Go here to comment on All Is Lost.)

I have to remind myself that there were just two comments on the Top Gun story. It’s easy to inflate what might be a minority opinion. It’s easy to sound supercilious on social media. I’ll admit that I’ve grown sensitive to this kind of commentary during my tenure at Latitude. A few years ago, there was a reliable, nearly singular voice telling us that we were encouraging unsafe behavior — sometimes on seemingly innocuous issues, such as circling a superyacht at anchor, or using a crude autopilot while singlehanding. (To be fair, nothing is completely risk-free when you’re sailing.)

A common refrain from this commenter was something like, “People might read your story and go sailing, and the worst might happen.” Well, that is a possibility, and it assumes that we must always hedge against people’s worst behavior and decisions — a premise with which we disagree. (If we said something like, “Send us a selfie of you crossing the bow of a container ship at close range,” then clearly we would be encouraging bad behavior. Just to be clear, DO NOT do that, ever.)

This is where some kind of double standard rears its head.

We don’t want to throw anyone under the bus, but you’ll notice in the photos above that lots (if not all) of the sailors in the two photos aren’t wearing lifejackets. We cannot recall a single comment pointing this out. It appears that lifejacket-less behavior is tolerated in certain contexts.

I know lots of bluewater sailors who go lifejacket-less during the day, then don a PFD at night and require crew to be tethered in if leaving the cockpit — or tethered in the cockpit if alone. When I was singlehanding my Columbia Challenger out of San Rafael between 2017 and 2020, I never wore a lifejacket. Sometimes, I trailed a knotted line behind the boat, but mostly, I was completely ‘naked.’

I honestly can’t tell you why, nor could I possibly rationalize my decision. Years later, after I’d sold the boat, I would think about what it might feel like: the boat lurching unexpectedly underneath me, the panic of slipping and falling into the water. The cold would be shocking, as would the awkward weight of my wet clothes. Assuming the boat was on “autopilot,” I would have a millisecond to grasp at something. I know from experience swimming off the boat while anchored how hard it was to pull myself up via the outboard in the best of circumstances. Maybe the boat would round up and maybe not, but even if it sailed a short distance away from me, that’s still a substantial distance to swim while fully clothed.

I know that it would all happen incredibly fast — the overwhelming cold, the panic, the uncontrollable shaking. I can’t bear to think of seeing the boat sail away or just out of reach. My family would be devastated. It would be such an absurd and preventable death. I died because I didn’t feel like wearing a lifejacket. (Assuming I did have a PFD on in this same scenario is not any kind of guarantee that I’d survive or be rescued in a timely manner; it would only give me a fighting chance.) Here’s a story of this exact scenario off of Berkeley.

So please don’t hear me saying that you shouldn’t wear a lifejacket. You absolutely should, always. Please be safe out there. Please don’t die a preventable death. But let’s at least be honest: Sometimes, people don’t wear lifejackets.