High Profile Tragedy Raises Awareness for Boating Safety - EPIRB

[Mikey]

If you have been following the news this past week, I'm sure you have heard of the four men, two of which were professional football players, whose fishing trip turned traffic after their boat over turned in bad weather. Needless to say, only one of the men survived.

Perhaps a good thing to come out of this unfortunate and high profile incident is safety awareness amongst boaters, particulary (in this case) the use EPIRB's. The unofficial Coast Guard blog points to a good article from MSNBC titled People Stocking Up on Safety Gear After Boating Tragedy where it's stated that "managers at West Marine say they've had a hard time keeping the shelves full of safety gear this week."

While it is unfortunate that often times something tragic has to happen in order for ill-prepared people to get a good wake up call, I believe everything happens for a reason and hopefully this incident will help prevent similar ones from happening in the future.

[Captmad]

Another piece of safety gear very often overlooked is line.
Due hypothermia tie yourself to the boat and or other people before HT sets in.
An overturned boat is much easier to spot than a single head sticking out of the water. Several people tied together is much easier to spot as well.

If you can, get out of the water and tie your self to the overturned boat.

[tengineer]

According to what the USCG said, in 68 degree water those guys only had about a 18 hours before hypothermia started taking them. How that squares with the USCG saying survival suits are not needed/required in those latitudes on OSVs is another issue. My guess is OSV people are just tougher or have more insulation or something.

[Boomer]

What a lot of people don't think about is staying on a capsized boat. I leave two twenty ft. lines tied to my bow rails and coiled at the end of the rod boxes with a float attached. Hopefully I won't ever need them but trying to hold onto the wet bottom of a boat is about impossible.

[Mr 100-ton]

is you life worth 543.99 dollars?????????

you decide.

http://www.boatersland.com/epirbs.html

ACR RapidFix 406 EPIRB
406 MHz EPIRB with GPS Interface Category II (Manually Deployable) W/Bracket

Our price: $543.99

[NAUTICART]

Yeah sorry to say, people will revert back to being lax about the whole thing only after a short while. Not having the EPIRB ? don't understand when they had money, but not checking forcast was just as bad in that small boat. This story just got more publicity because they were football players.

[seadog6608]

The most overlooked safety device on a boat has to be knowledge. Boaters should really be required to take a Power Squadron's safety class. Learn a little about rules of the road and boat handling before getting out on the water.

[rjbpilot]

And good old common sense.