The Swimmer’s Safety Belt, as its name states, wasn’t conceived for boaters, according to inventor Dennis Brown, president of New Jersey-based SeaPro Marine Products (www.seapromarine.com).

“I’d had a couple of close calls swimming,” says Brown, who set about creating his PFD using bicycle tubes as early prototypes. He soon realized boaters also want a thin, lightweight, unobstructed PFD.

The FIRST Practical Life Vest for Swimmers

The result is a 1-pound belt pack that inflates into a U-shaped life vest that is pulled over the head and provides 25 pounds of buoyancy. SeaPro also offers a 13-ounce model (16 pounds of buoyancy) for swimmers; it is not Coast Guard approved.

“This is for the person who doesn’t want anything bulky or unattractive,” Brown says. “Even inflatables are around your neck all the time.”

The belt has Coast Guard approval as a Type III inflatable PFD, meaning it will not keep an unconscious person’s face out of the water and provides buoyancy only when inflated.

The belt is the first, and currently only, Coast Guard-approved manual inflatable PFD with a cylinder seal indicator that shows the color green when the CO2 cylinder is full and red when it is empty, according to the Coast Guard. As of Sept. 1, all manual inflatable PFDs without a cylinder seal indicator will be approved as Type V inflatable PFD, with the added condition that it must be worn when under way to meet Coast Guard carriage requirements.

Boaters now have available to them a PFD that can be worn as a belt.

The Swimmer’s Safety Belt is made of a polyurethane-coated nylon shell and includes an oral inflator tube. The belts fit waists from 25 to 50 inches, and come with a one-year warranty.

SeaPro was to begin production of the Swimmer’s Safety Belt in June and planned to have them in retail outlets this summer. The suggested retail price was expected to be between $119.95 and $129.99.

For information on the inflator mechanism used in the belt, visit www.safetyinflator.