Patent Grant
10953965
The present invention relates generally to water safety devices and particularly to an integrated rudder life-jacket useful in navigating currents while maintaining buoyancy.
Running or swimming a rapid flowing stream or river can be challenging for even the strongest swimmers. Getting flipped off a raft or floatation device often happens and the survival strategy is to to roll yourself back upright and swim to safety. Unfortunately this doesn't translate in many cases, especially down swift moving and bump rapids.
Getting flipped over in moving water will fool even the best survival instincts because we generally train in flat water, and suddenly rapids are a merciless time to retrain instincts.
When going of to the side into the rapidly flowing water, maneuvering into a breathable position can be challenging. Having accomplished that then moving to a safe position like shore or boat will require a strong swim into and against currents. A human is ill equipped to beat the onslaught of a raging flooding river or rapid.
What is needed are safety devices for the reluctant or surprised swimmers to retain control in the rapidly moving waters and allow swimmer to swiftly move to safety, even when there is insufficient swimmer strength to reach safety.
Swimming where rivers are flooding, wood and rocks are moving past, every watery section running strong current is the time to be extremely careful as precious life may be on the line and a bad decision may cost. This is where self-rescue swimming and survival swimming becomes mandatory. What is needed are water devices which are just part and parcel with the activities around and in dangerous waters, devices that can save a life.
Life-jackets have been in use and are generally made of various water-proof materials such as nylon and other synthetics. These may be inflatable or floatable when filled with compressed air or floatation material, Styrofoam or other materials used to increase their buoyancy, respectively. Quite often they were designed for emergencies and have the disadvantage of being uncomfortable to wear and not sufficiently warm.
In teaching rapids or river swimming to beginners, or for swimmers who are somewhat handicapped, it is desirable to provide additional safety margins. Affixing devices to typical life-jacket construction, whether formed of padded fibrous filled materials or buoyant plastic materials, generally are of a size and shape which interfere with swimming motions, additional floatation where limited area of the body and are inadequate for the purposes of generally supporting the torso is needed. Moreover where the life-jacket impedes the swimmer, an alternate device to get a swimmer caught in rapid currents is welcome.
What are needed are water garment affixable-removable devices to support a swimmer in the water currents without interfering with the movements of the swimmer's limbs and the shoulder and leg muscles and also provides minimum bulging or interference with the general shape of the swimmer's body.
Many conventional personal floatation devices are ill equipped for supporting users in positions that maintain the swimmers head above raging or rapidly flowing water, even when the remainder of the body can be submerged. Many personal floatation devices are designed to support the user in a vertical orientation (i.e. with the head up and feet down), such devices are not useful applications where a heads horizontal orientation is desired. Of those devices capable of orienting the user in both an upright and horizontal position along the surface of the water, some such devices tend to be cumbersome to use, making such devices less suitable for use in emergency conditions. Furthermore, the safety-jacket may lack the ability to automatically orient the individual in a particular direction within a moving body of water, forcing a swimmer to exert energy to maintain their bearing within the water while swimming hard against the current to get to safety. What is needed are water safety devices that can maintain a swimmers head above water in a navigable orientation suitable for rescue or self-rescue.
The present invention discloses a water safety garment or life jacket with an integrated rudder. Such a life-jacket has a dorsal fin-like rudder with rudder base integrated edge hinge coupled to the jacket back side and the rudder with a supporting frame flexibly protruding from the jacket back side edge. A flexible cord having two ends, with cord middle firmly attached to the rudder for lateral rudder controls using the pull handles at each cord end, with cord threaded through a jacket lateral side loops and midway attached to the rudder for lateral rudder side to side. A swimmer floating in a water current in such a life-jacket with integrated rudder can navigate position via pull handle steering by pulling the cord attached to the backside protruding rudder. The rudder and rudder panel material is for water environment and made from a set of light weight water-displacing materials such as nylon, foam, plastic, Styrofoam and synthetics.
Specific embodiments of the invention will be described in detail with reference to the following figures.
In the following detailed description of embodiments of the invention, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a more thorough understanding of the invention. However, it will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that the invention may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well-known features have not been described in detail to avoid unnecessarily complicating the description.
An object of the invention is to provide a life jacket effective in navigating water currents too strong to swim out of.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a safety increasing device for a water garment such as a life-jacket which is suitable to wear when enjoying offshore fishing, boating, recreating, running rapids or just escaping a flooding river.
It is another object of the present invention to increase the margin of safety for a life-jacket having a rudder enabling a swimmer with instant control over watery immersion navigation without the need for more power, which the swimmer may or may not have sufficient to handle in an emergency situation
It is another object of the present invention to provide a safety boosting life-jacket device with added buoyancy.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a life-jacket safety add-on which can be foldably affixed to the wearer's body using any swimming garment, even those not in the life-jacket class.
The present invention discloses several embodiments for a life jacket with a rudder.
The back side of a typical life-jacket 227 with integrated attachable-detachable rudder is shown with a added support patch 225 coupling a rudder 215 base centerline edge 223 with attachable-detachable hinge locks 211213 at the two base edge 223 ends. Hook-and-loop or snap-on components can be used as well to attach and detach the rudder from the jacket back. The rudder integration patch 225 or guard can be hook-and-loop, or more permanently coupled to a life jacket 210 with adhesives or stitching in other embodiments. Patch material should be compatible with life jacket 201. The rudder internals can be with waterproof or water compatible material casing for inflatable or synthetic foam or semi-rigid material in panels or compartments. These would be shaped as narrow slab volumes or compartments for fluid redirecting strength. Redirection would come from the manipulation of cord 207 handles 209221. The cord is threaded thru jacket loops 203217 and loop guards 205219 and is affixed to the rudder 215 centerline 223, providing the handles 209221 with rudder control for steering in a water current.
In an embodiment of the invention the rudder panel material is made from a set of light weight water-displacing materials such as nylon, foam, plastic, styrofoam and synthetics. In another embodiment the integrated rudder panels will be inflatable compartments floatable when filled with compressed air to provide stiffness to rudder plane and to increase jacket buoyancy. In other embodiments a jacket rudder hinge coupling will have fiber shaft insert in centerline loop in casing or a fiber rod end terminated with a lock-nut fastener or snap on fasteners. In still other embodiments of the invention a rudder 307 could be attached to a life-jacket with snaps or snap on device, hook-and-loop, adhesives, stitched on reinforcements or sewn. In another embodiment a bar that is attached to rudder and part of rod, flattened for the inside, could slip over top of a life-jacket and be held in place by the pressure of the wearer's body and material flexible strap secured.
A flexible cord 413 having two ends, with the cord middle 409 firmly attached to the rudder 407 is used for controlling rudder angle. Each cord end has a pull handle 417 for manual control with the cord threaded through a jacket 415 lateral side loop 103 and midway attached to the rudder 409 for lateral rudder control via the pull handles 417.
Therefore, while the invention has been described with respect to a limited number of embodiments, those skilled in the art, having benefit of this invention, will appreciate that other embodiments can be devised which do not depart from the scope of the invention as disclosed herein. Other aspects of the invention will be apparent from the following description and the appended claims.
| Number | Name | Date | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| D667911 | Barbis | Sep 2012 | S |
| 8262426 | Barbis | Sep 2012 | B1 |
