Sam grew up around the water and has extensive experience with kayaks, paddleboards, and powerboats.
Marc’s thoughts on lifejackets are that he always feels safe wearing one, though he admits they can sometimes be uncomfortable, and he doesn’t always wear one. However, he makes sure to have a lifejacket on the boat, as the law requires it. When participating in activities where he could fall, such as jet skiing, paddle boating, waterskiing. or using a stand-up paddleboard, Marc always wears a lifejacket. He knows that if he loses his balance or hits his head, the lifejacket will provide the necessary support and safety.
Marc has previously fallen unexpectedly off jet skis, as they are a new activity for him. He says “What’s fun on a jet ski is doing tight turns and donuts, but the waves can throw you in any direction.” He’s also fallen while water skiing and says, “Once you’re up, you’re not really expecting to fall, but when it happens, there’s no control over it.”
“Once you're up, you’re not really expecting to fall, but when it happens, there’s no control over it.”
Marc found the Virtual Reality (VR) experiences to be very realistic. He stated, g, “Once immersed in the environment, you lose awareness of everything outside of it, so you don’t know what will happen next. Sometimes you're reaching over for something. It might happen then, but you're still shocked.”
He said that when he fell, he definitely felt a sense of panic and a loss of control. He found himself grabbing onto things instinctively. Thoughts raced through his mind quickly, but then he reminded himself that it was just virtual reality and that there were people around him. In the moment, though, none of those thoughts crossed his mind until he realized he was okay.
“You try to be a bit more careful. Does that mean I'm going to be wearing a lifejacket around the dock? Because I could also fall, you know—suddenly someone might push me, or I might slip or something?"
With the dunk tank experiences, Marc found that he had the same shocked feeling when falling into both the warm and cold-water tanks unexpectedly. He recalls sitting on the edge of the tanks each time: “So you were talking to me about dolphins, about experiences, and I knew you were leading me to something. But again, I still didn’t know WHEN it was going to happen. But when you fall…you fall.”
Marc gasped when he fell into the cold-water tank; it was shocking how cold it was. He had the same shocked feeling when he fell into the warm-water tank, except that he thinks the shock of the cold water made him inhale a little bit of water, which didn’t happen in the warmer water.
After going through the experiences, Marc isn’t sure if his lifejacket habits have really changed, as he states that he’s always thought all flotation devices would be useful in case an accident happens. In the winter, we walk across the lake in Quebec. “You try to be a bit more careful. Does that mean I'm going to be wearing a lifejacket around the dock? Because I could also fall, you know—suddenly someone might push me, or I might slip or something? Probably that's unlikely, although I've never thought that it wasn’t important to have a lifejacket on near water.”