For those who have never tried it: Practice a few self-rescues with your PFD on. Then try a few more with it off. This is exactly what I did very early on, with my first sea kayak, and, well, I've been wearing my PFD ever since.

: While this is certainly true, if you look at kayaker drownings,
: it's pretty obvious that unconsciousness is not a factor in most
: of them. Simply having enough flotation to keep one's self at
: the surface where one can swim or at least actively keep one's
: head above water, would probably prevent the majority of
: drownings. In the incident cited, PFDs would have prevented the
: initial distress situation and prevented the would-be rescuers
: from getting into distress themselves.