  Ram pressure stripping is perhaps the most efficient mechanism for removing
gas and quenching galaxies in dense environments as they move through the
intergalactic medium. Extreme examples of on-going ram pressure stripping are
known as jellyfish galaxies, characterized by a tail of stripped material that
can be directly observed in multiple wavelengths. Using the largest homogeneous
broad-band optical jellyfish candidate sample in local clusters known to date,
we measure the angle between the direction of the tails visible in the
galaxies, and the direction towards the host cluster center. We find that
$33\%$ of the galaxy tails point away from the cluster center, $18\%$ point
towards the cluster center, and $49\%$ point elsewhere. Moreover, we find
stronger signatures of ram pressure stripping happening on galaxies with a tail
pointing away and towards the cluster center, and larger velocity dispersion
profiles for galaxies with tails pointing away. These results are consistent
with a scenario where ram pressure stripping has a stronger effect for galaxies
following radial orbits on first infall. The results also suggest that in many
cases, radially infalling galaxies are able to retain their tails after
pericenter and continue to experience significant on-going ram pressure
stripping. We further constrain the lifespan of the optical tails from the
moment they first appear to the moment they disappear, by comparing the
observed tail directions with matched N-body simulations through Bayesian
parameter estimation. We obtain that galaxy tails appear for the first time at
$\sim 1.16$ R$_{200}$ and disappear $\sim660$ Myr after pericenter.
