Tag Archives: U.S. Coast Guard

Capsized or swamped, stay with the boat!

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 ...

Read More »

File a float plan: Help others help you

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 ...

Read More »

Boating accident? Don’t forget to report!

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 ...

Read More »

Boat safer by slowing down

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 ...

Read More »

Safely navigate using buoys

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, ...

Read More »

Rendering aid: How to safely tow other boats

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 ...

Read More »

Five Timeless Seamanship Lessons

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 ...

Read More »

Sea Tow, C-PORT spearhead 911 emergency response changes in Coast Guard reauthorization

With the passage and subsequent presidential signing of the 2018 Frank Lobiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act last month, the U.S. Coast Guard will now seek to develop a clear and effective procedure on how emergency maritime distress calls are dispatched to authorities, which could result in a quicker, more efficient response and countless saved lives across the country. According to ...

Read More »