If you want to take someone sailing on a boat and you ask them if they can swim, what exactly are you asking? Everyone can float if they have a life jacket right?
My understanding is that someone is being asked if they can take care of themselves and/or tread water until they are rescued and/or if they are a strong swimmer, but I could be wrong.
Even with a life jacket you might still have to swim back to the boat. Or maybe they want to drop anchor at some point and let everyone have a little swim? Seems like a basic safety/planning kind of question since you’d be in the middle of a body of water
I think so, too. Swimming with a life jacket in my opinion is more difficult than swimming without one. However, I would think that treading water is more difficult than swimming with a life jacket so maybe if swimming with a life jacket is the expectation, then that’s ok.