A PFD is a "personal flotation device"---you need it, plus two-way
communications, navigation equipment. I piloted a boat during November
bad weather from Long Island to the Chesapeake one time---left it
because the owner lied about it being diesel-powered (it was Chevrolet
gas engine with a feeble car tranmission instead of Twin Disc marine
transmission), the two-way radio didn't work and there wasn't enough
rope or chain to permit the weak anchor (no spare) to reach bottom.
The owner didn't have life jackets either. I jumped ship at the W.R.
Grace fishing camp on a south-facing shore---only sand shore for miles
around, chartered an airplane and flew home with theW.R. Grace favorite
real estate broker
Read in the newspaper the boat owner drowned a cou[le days later and the
remnants of the boat drifted ashore on Smith Island. Good-Oh!!. I
would have drowned him myself a number of times, beginning with his lies
about having a diesel, and when the
shear pins in the outdrive kept breaking in eighty miles of open sea. I
really don't like hanging over the stern in icy seas without a life
jacket---or even with one. Couldn't teach the stupid bastard the
difference between a can buoy or num buoy, so he constantly kept running
aground on the Inland Waterway---not good for the seams, had to head for
a marine repair facility near Tom's River to stop them from leaking.