How windy is too windy

On balance, I always wear one though.

Sargesail - I agree it is difficult to envisage how a kicker can cause entrapment but here's my experience from way back when:

We capsized and my crew fell from the wire into the gap between hull and boom; standard routine.  

On this occasion, though, his trapeze hook caught on the kicker and, somehow, from the wrong direction i.e. from underneath so he couldn't lift himself off the kicker.  Quite how it happened I've never figured out - perhaps it snagged in a strange way as he was resurfacing - but the end result was he was caught, being dragged underwater, as the boat began to turn turtle.  At the same time his buoyancy aid was trying to return him to the surface which meant he was locked in tight - he couldn't duck underwater to free himself and, as I said, couldn't lift himself clear either.  To compound matters the harness straps and buoyancy aid were under numerous sweatshirts and jumpers that we all wore in those days to soak up water and couldn't be undone.

All I could do was get as far back on the board as I could ( I was pretty light in those days) and try to slow down the turtling process but we reached the point where my crew could only just snatch breaths of air as waves allowed him; every few seconds his mouth and nostrils broke free of the water.  Fortunately he was very calm - outwardly anyway - and perhaps we reached equilibrium (due to the effect of the buoyancy aid?) so we just hung in there, semi-turtled, with my crew taking occasional breaths of air, for what seemed an eternity until the boat - to my surprise and relief - came up.  

Needless to say we didn't have a knife on board.  These days I make sure there are always a couple to hand.