A comment on the Hudson R ditching thread prompts this. I thought it would be better to start a new thread.

The comment was something like "in cold water you can be dead from the cold in three minutes." That's the conventional wisdom, whether it's three minutes or five, or whatever: in cold water, you're dead in mere minutes.

This is a hot topic for me, because for me the worst case scenario is something like dumping a canoe in water that's, say, about 40 F. Obviously, your handy-dandy PSK avails you nothing if you're dead before you can use it.

So I've been reading up, and I found that the conventional wisdom just ain't true. According to Gordon Giesbrecht, a prof at the University of Manitoba, it would take 30 mins to an hour for me to die of hypothermia in that water. I wouldn't even be clinically hypothermic within the first ten minutes.

You can find lots of fascinating stuff by Googling this guy. Here's a couple of (dramatic) Youtube vids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gOW8ZaYqHA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyBVWrqvkEg
These focus on surviving if you go through the ice.

Also: http://www.coldwaterbootcamp.com
This is more boating-oriented.

This may be old news to some, but it was new to me.