With the missing Altona kayaker story being fresh in my mind I couldn't help but raise my eyebrows at this story:

http://www.news.com.au/national/breakin ... b2db9ac47c

Summary: 14 year-old was on a yacht 10nm off Gladstone with an almost deaf grandfather and not wearing a lifejacket. Falls overboard. no-one notices, finally gets spotted by another boat two hours later. Seems pretty lucky to survive; he could easily have ended up in the same situation as the Altona fellow.

Dunno about Qld rules about PFD's but allowing him to run around the boat without a jacket seems irresponsible.

He's very lucky. But down here with the water around 10 degrees cooler it may be a different story.

You are not required to wear a PFD except in times of heightened risk, launching and retrieving, I don't think walking around would fall into that category, having said that we always wear a PFD when leaving the cockpit as there are too many moving bits to knock you over and too many halyards etc to trip over and lifelines only work if they catch you and you hang on.
I fell off the bow of our yacht in Westernport as SWMBO didn't know port from starboard when I was freeing up a jib, wanting pressure off the sail I asked her to turn to starboard, which way is that she responded, right says I, she pushed the tiller to the right and I had braced for the opposite and this move put me right off balance.
I was wearing a PFD and was picked up by another yacht that was in the group before she could turn around and pick me up.
It was a very colourful language day.

That's the sort of stupid accident that is bound to happen when you use strange terms like port and starboard instead of left and right

Yes, but pushing the tiller one way turns it the other, I assumed that logic would have dictated the relatively simple rules.
Next yacht will have a wheel.