I don't have any experience with personal locater beacons, but they seem like a great idea for single-handers. The technology is changing rapidly, so depending upon your cruising area you might want to research. New AIS-based personal locater devices are coming soon, which would have the advantage of getting you the fastest response from the closest AIS-equipped vessel; but at the disadvantage of having no satellite connection in case no AIS-equipped vessel was nearby.

Do I need to ask whether you wear your PFD at all times, or when in blue water whether you tether on as well?

Related to this:

West Marine is running a sale on WM-branded offshore automatic inflatables (not hydrostatic, their best non-hydro mechanism).

With or without the harness it is $149. A pretty good deal, if you ask me... Makes it the same price as the coastal (less buoyancy, no harness):

[url]http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?produ...(link is external)

I re-read your post and see that you're describing an automatic inflatable, but not the hydrostatic (i.e., pressure sensing) one. Nevertheless, I hope the following treatise on pull tab inflatables will help someone else.

My original post:
David, if by non-hydrostatic you mean the manual pull tab, allow me to say that that model is - in my opinion - not appropriate for Pacific Northwest waters. A good friend went overboard in the Columbia River about a year ago wearing a full Type-3 non-inflatable PFD, and he was so shocked by the cold water that he said later that if he had been wearing a pull tab inflatable he very likely would not have been able to pull the tab. In our NW waters, cold water shock is now recognized as the most important near term threat for a person overboard. As I tell my students...

"In cold water immersion, what happens in the first three minutes is MOST important...you have to EARN the privilege of dying from hypothermia!"

The PLB & EPRIB come in two main types, GPS equiped and not.
Based on several rescues here over summer, where the EPIRB was a GPS model, and the rescue people went straight to the people. They went from activating their beacon, to being back on dry land in one hour.

Based on these results, I know that spending the extra few dollars to get the GPS equiped model is a very important investment.

[QUOTE=blair;14303]What is a hydrostatic PFD?
I haven't pulled mine out of the bag yet, but I know that it is supposed to be auto inflate.[/QUOTE]

The conventional auto PFD triggers by a little cartridge that dissolves instantly in water. It's cheap, but can trigger with a good splash or even sustained high humidity.

A hydrostatic auto PFD triggers by water pressure. You can leave it in the rain or splash it with water all day long. It needs to go underwater to trigger.

Both have a pull tab for manual backup.

A hydrostatic PFD, as Greg says, senses water pressure (not water presence) to trigger the inflation. It needs to be submerged about 4 inches.

I have the ACR, as I too do a lot of soloing. One thing I also carry on my body is a submersible VHF. I'm typically within radio signal of somebody. It would be nice to know for sure that someone is coming by hearing it straight from them.