Joe Coons
Well, I'll be darned! Last month I learned why professional columnists always have a spare column in their editor's drawer: I forgot to write one in time for the Jib Sheet's deadline! Even though I'm older, I'll try to do better remembering from now on!
WHAT A WONDERFUL SEMINAR: You'll read about it elsewhere this month, I'm sure, but the safety seminar held on September 9 at the Club was really terrific. Our instructor was Lynn Fuller of Fremont Maritime Services, Inc. Lynn has the perfect combination of experience, training, personality, and good humor to make a very full day of lectures and demonstrations go quickly, effectively, and with smiles all around.
"Don't confuse twenty years of luck with experience", Lynn said, and from eight o'clock in the morning until past five in the afternoon gave us an amazing review and introduction to all the areas of safety at sea.
As you know from these columns, I'm pretty "puffed-up" about my safety skills, but this seminar brought me back to normal size in a number of areas, and reminded me how all of us recreational boaters, including me, need to keep up to date on safety information, training, and equipment to assure ourselves that we will be good stewards of the lives of our family and boating guests. Judy and I also came away from the session with a long list of items (many small and inexpensive) that we should have on our boat.
Lynn reminded us all that emergencies happen fast, and they are unexpected: you must already know what to do and equipment must already be available; but much more importantly, being ready requires an expenditure of time, thought, and effort. Highlighting this with humor, he suggested another way to approach emergencies: Call a meeting. It might go like this:
"The skipper gets the crew together on the foredeck, and says, "Look, folks, the engine room is on fire. Perhaps we should get out an extinguisher! Mate, how does this idea sound to you? Any other ideas? And which kind of extinguisher should we use? Does anyone know? Is that what we do first? Let's hear it, guys!""
We learned that preparation, prevention, risk assessment and information-sharing are the keys to emergency preparedness.
Please, please, do yourself, your family, and your friends a favor: the next time one of these seminars is held, spend the money and take the course. The $50/person or $75/family price was a great value, both Judy and I will enthusiastically confirm!
Over the next months I'll continue to review some of this seminar's lessons, and other subjects, too. But I'm going to end this month's column with a question: If your boat had some kind of serious leak and had taken on enough water to put it six inches over the bilge boards, is your gear tidy enough, and stowed well enough, and is enough junk OFF the boat so that you could find essential equipment without having flotsam and jetsam everywhere?
Think about it: it might be time to tidy up and off-load your vessel!
See you next month!