I’m not a fan of the Cold Water Boot Camp series for a number of reasons.  Briefly, they undermine cold water safety by understating the danger of immersion, ignoring thermal protection, giving misleading and inaccurate timeframes in the 1-10-1 formula, and claiming that wearing a PFD is the key to cold water safety.  On our website, we identify four of the PFD inaccuracies in the article: What PFDs Can and Can’t Do. They are:
 
1) The best way to stay safe on the water, any water, is to simply wear your life jacket.
 
2) The difference between becoming a statistic and a survivor – is wearing a life jacket.
 
3) With a life jacket, you can survive for over an hour before hypothermia sets in. That’s right. 50 precious minutes or more of extra time to have help arrive.
 
4) You could survive an hour, or more, in ice water, if you have a lifejacket on and can protect your airway.
 
Advancing the notion that a person can safely paddle on cold water simply by wearing a PFD is not only dangerous and inaccurate, it’s also contrary to every bit of scientific research that’s been conducted for the past 50 years.
 
When Giesbrecht originally presented this concept, it was stated as 1-10-1-2, which he subsequently abbreviated to 1-10-1.  You can see a good example of this in his “Frozen Mythbusters” series, in which he states that you have:
 
“Two Hours to Be Found. If you lose consciousness but do not slip below the water, you can still be successfully rescued if you are found within two hours or so.”
http://wildernessmedicinenewsletter.wordpress.com/2006/10/26/introduction-to-frozen-mythbusters/
 
With respect to 1-10-1, it’s also worth noting that Giesbrecht himself didn’t last ten minutes in freezing water before becoming incapacitated and helpless.  In Hypothermia, Frostbite, and Other Cold Injuries (2006), he states:
"In water near 32F, incapacitation can occur within two to ten minutes, but takes progressively longer at higher water temperatures.  In a demonstration, the writer, while wearing a snowmobile suit in ice water, was completely incapacitated within six minutes after swimming only 50 feet."
 
In that same publication, he also gives the following timeframes:
Cold Shock – “can kill within seconds to two minutes”.
Cold Incapacitation – “occurs within two to thirty minutes”.
 
The 1-10-1 formula is frequently presented by saying that “You Have”:
“1 minute to get your breathing under control”
“10 minutes of meaningful movement”
“1 hour before you become unconscious due to hypothermia”
 
In reality, the only thing you truly “have” in an unprotected cold water immersion is a a desperate race against time and the terribly lethal power of cold water.