Boat safety

[old man]

I have been getting ads on facebook for New York's online boat safety course. Despite knowing everything i took it for the heck of it. It takes 3 hours and you don't have to pay unless you want the certificate. It's very well done and worth doing. And i found out out i don't know everything. I got two wrong out of sixty on the final but to be fair i was drunk when i took the test. On a serious note with boat safety on my mind i checked my safety gear. My flares are outdated,i need a new fire extinguisher,and worst of all my mustang inflatable pfd is 9 years old and never been serviced. So i put it on and got in the pool...nothing. I pull the ripcord...nothing. I count on this thing to save my life during the cold water season and never bothered to read the maintenance info. Lesson learned.

Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

[rolmops]

I did the same thing last winter through boat usa,but it was free then.

[glenm]

Good advice. I'll have to check it out!

[Sk8man]

Very timely and practical post. We all need to be reminded from time to time and to be effectively prepared for what may happen out there. I experienced an example of how important the basics are last  Saturday when fishing with a long time buddy (very experienced boater and fisherman) and we fished from Dean's Cove on Cayuga in his 24 ft inboard that has a kicker motor as well (Thank God). The wind was supposed to be 6 mph but it was actually about 10-12 with white caps from the SE so we trolled north with it and caught some small landlocks and lakers. When we were in sight of the north end of the lake  we decided to try to get out of the wind a bit by going to the east side  so we pulled our gear and went to start up the main motor and the starter went and there was no way we could get it going (e.g. by moving flywheel to different spot, multiple tries etc.). It was pretty rough water by then and wind kicking up  and we had to make a run for it with the kicker back to Deans and the trip took us 2 1/2 hours and quite a bit of fuel in the 6 gal tank which was only partially full when we came out. We finally struggled back to Deans launch and my buddy masterfully navigated the rock barriers on either side of the launch. When we checked the gas can again it was nearly on fumes with just a tiny bit of fuel left. On my own boat I ALWAYS keep both the main 60 gal tank full at all times and the 3 gal tank also. I also carry a spare 1 gal. mixture little tank as well as a "backup" (will last about 2-3 hrs at regular speed). The importance of having a kicker can not be understated as well as making sure you never run short of fuel.  The first thing my buddy did when he got home was to fill his small tank up We would have been totally screwed without that kicker and would not have made it another hundred yards on the fuel situation.....lesson learned.

[skipper19]

Yup, 4th of July. I try to put on a small display by firing off my old 12 Guage flares dated exp. 2009. They have been stored in the boat as extras in a watertight case along with the flare gun. The gun worked fine, but the flares, all four of them were duds. I do keep them updated... but now I really am sure that keeping the old ones is useless.