Safety

Boating should be blissful, relaxing and fun, and we all want it to be that way.  One of the best ways of ensuring that everyone is relaxed and at ease is by having all the necessary safety equipment on board.   Safety equipment is for both boaters and boats.

Starting with boaters - it is important that people remain on board (unless they have made the deliberate decision to go swimming!)   If they go overboard by accident, then you will want to make sure that they can float, be seen and be heard; and that they can either climb back on board or be hauled in.   There are all kinds, shapes and sizes of life vests and life jackets,and it is critical that you have one for every person on board, including children.   There is a wide range of vests available for kids.   If you are expecting an unusually large number of people on board for a single boating trip, then you can also buy buoyant cushions with arm straps.   When not in use as a buoyancy aid, they can make cockpit seats more comfortable.

For coastal and offshore boating, and especially for solo boaters or couples, safety harnesses are a must.   When sailing in the North Sea and the English Channel, we wore harnesses all the time.   In recent times there has been a new development in combining inflatable life jackets and harnesses, which we really like.   The jackets can be inflated manually or automatically on entering water. 

All boats should carry ring or horseshoe buoys.  These should be mounted close to the stern of the boat, often near to the cockpit, so that they can be thrown quickly to a person in the water.   Many boats carry Lifeslings.   These combine a folding, horseshoe-type buoy with a long line, so that the person overboard can put the horseshoe around them and under their arms, and be towed back towards the boat.  They come in small, soft containers that can be fastened to a pushpit or guard rail, and the end of the towing line needs to be tied permanently to the rail, so that it doesn't float away when the buoy is thrown.   You can get a more comprehensive version of the Lifesling that includes a hoisting tackle.   These are particularly valuable if the person overboard is heavy, weighted down with wet clothing, or otherwise incapacitated.   Indeed, hoisting a person back on board is not easy.   It is worth doing a "man-overboard" drill in good, calm conditions to practice the art.  

It's not always easy to find a person who has fallen overboard, even if it has just happened.   Even a 2-foot swell can hide a person's head from view.   Since most boats are underway when an incident like this occurs, the person can be left quite a way behind, even by a slow-moving sailboat.   To provide the best posssible opportunity to find someone, you can have crew-overboard poles with flags that you let loose as soon as possible after the person falls over the side.    Some life saver buoys also have poles and flags attached.

Then, continuing with the Boat:   Boats can incur all kinds of safety problems.  

Fire is a nasty one that can spoil your day, although it is quite unusual.   Fire can occur from the stove in the galley - and it's surprising how many people just don't think about such hazards.   When we were active in the sailing community in the UK, we heard of a couple of sailors who tried to fry chips (french fries) in a large pan full of oil during heavy weather conditions.  The hot oil spilled on to the burner causing a fire.   Luckily the sailors had a fire blanket and fire extinguishers, so the damage was not great, but an oil-spill on the cabin sole did not make it easy to move about down below.
Fire can also occur from sparks caused by friction in various parts of the engine, from malfunctions of water heaters, from fuel leaks dripping on to hot exhausts, and from lightning.   It's good practice to look, listen and smell so that problems can be identified early.   Any indication of smoke, or a smell of something burning, or a change in the sound of an engine can provide early warning signals.

The most difficult one to think about is the potential for lightning strikes.   And anyone sailing in and around the Southern States and the Caribbean might be concerned about this problem.   Unfortunately there is no consensus on whether lightning protection really protects a vessel, or whether it can make matters worse.   Before crusing, we read a huge amount of literature on the subject, and in the end decided not to install lightning protection, but that was our personal choice.

Having said all that about fire, the solution is to have plenty of fire extinguishers - hand-held ones in every cabin, automatic ones mounted above the engine, and also to have fire blankets for small, galley-related fires.

Running aground is another hazard of boating, especially in coastal areas, rivers and lakes.   The solution for this is to have good charts, whether paper or electronic ones; to know the buoyage system; to know the state of the tide (or depth of water in the river or lake); and to be able to navigate so that you know where you are at all times.   There are many electronic instruments for assisting you with navigation - GPS for position, fishfinders/echosounders for depth of water, and radar for navigation, and combined instruments - so that even if you're not so good a dead-reckoning you should be OK.   Having said that, it is also useful to know what the bottom is like.   It's much less of a problem going aground on a muddy bottom than it is on hard sand, or worse still, rock.

 
 
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