Boating Safety

You obey the pedestrian crossing signals but trip on the curb. Wear safety glasses but saw through a power cord. Map out a complex trip but miss a simple turn. It’s the same in boating: Neglecting the little things can lead to big problems. (Just ask the guy who forgot to install the hull drain plug.) Want to avoid the ...

It can seemingly happen in a heartbeat: a following wave stuffs and rolls your boat, and you’re in the water. Or, the body of water is in your boat — a wave or wake over bow, transom or gunwales; a hull split; a through-hull failed. Maybe (sigh!) someone forgot to install the plug. The first rule’s the same whether you’re ...

OK, for the moment, don’t think of yourself as the boater in peril. Instead, imagine yourself as the loved one concerned for an overdue boater and unsure. When to worry? What to do? Maybe that loved one is contacted by a first-responder agency. The boater’s empty trailer and tow vehicle seem abandoned at a ramp, with no sign of the ...

Crack up your car, and the responding police officer, sheriff’s deputy or state trooper files any required report. If you’re the operator or owner of a boat involved in an accident though, you must complete and file an official accident report with your state’s boating authority. It’s not busywork: The U.S. Coast Guard compiles and maintains statistics drawn from boating ...

Running the inlet, navigating the channel, backing into the slip: So much of what constitutes seamanship involves forging ahead with confidence. (Poetic license allows me to use the phrase “forge ahead” to reference the phrase “backing in.”) Well, there are times when taking one’s time, if not stopping altogether, proves the best and most seamanlike course of action. Let’s start ...

In talking with boaters, be they readers, marina mates or folks I meet on the water, it’s become apparent that some are baffled by buoys. The crux of the problem, as I’ve discerned it, is the supposition that navaids tell loads of detailed information — that they are supposed to be interpreted, only after long experience, like hoodoo chicken bones, ...

You’re on your way home, feeling the last warmth of the sun as it kisses the horizon, when the cellphone rings. A buddy, with his wife and three kids aboard, can’t get his motor started, and there isn’t a commercial towing vessel nearby. Consider this advice before offering a tow back to port. Boat and Gear Limitations Your cleats and ...

In his Seamanship column for Boating’s July 1960 issue, Elbert Robberson wrote: “In daylight, objects around you are easy to identify. They are big or little, short or long, round or square, and they appear very plainly to be bridges, docks, land, beacons, buoys, or boats of various kinds heading one way or another. But at night, all of these ...