By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
While large ships and certain other vessels require a Certificate of Inspection (COI), many smaller commercial vessels don’t require routine inspections. Just as recreational vessels are not required to have a Vessel Safety Check (VSC), smaller passenger vessels such as

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
If you watch television stations that have advertising, you probably realize that half of what you watch consists of endless (or so it seems) spot commercials lasting from as few as 15 seconds up to two minutes in length. Prior to 1970, when the FCC prohibited

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
I read a local news post regarding a collision between a bass boat and a pontoon boat that resulted in the death of the pontoon boat operator and serious injuries to two other occupants of the pontoon boat. The news post noted that the operator of the bass boat was indicted

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Getting home safely is the most important consideration of recreational boating. Everyone knows they should be wearing a life jacket when boating, and we have also talked about visual distress signals such as flares and rockets. This column is dedicated to discussion of

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Our purpose in providing free Vessel Safety Check (VSC) inspections is to enhance safe boating practices by letting the boat operator know if they fail to meet any regulatory requirements and to offer recommendations from the Coast Guard on how they can make their

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Every year at Coast Guard Station Galveston the base hosts Safety at Sea for the Sea Scouts, a division of the Boy Scouts of America. There are several activities in which the Sea Scouts participate, including participating in the use of pyrotechnic visual distress signals,

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
I was in line for the Port Bolivar to Galveston ferry early one morning to go to work on base. The deck hands unloaded the incoming ferry, and I put my truck in gear in anticipation of moving forward to load the ferry. But we were not directed to load. After a few long minutes we could

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
We have all seen pieces of plastic and other garbage floating in the water near our boats or washed up on our beaches. There are many regulations that apply to dumping of garbage, sewage, and oil waste. This column addresses a few of those, and discusses the

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
“The Fog” is a 1980 American supernatural horror film directed by John Carpenter. It tells the story of a strange, glowing fog that sweeps over a small coastal town in Northern California, bringing with it the vengeful ghosts of leprous mariners who were killed in

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla.
One of the most important things you can do as a recreational boater is to know the territory in which you intend to operate. For Galveston Bay boaters, the number one hazard is shallow water. If you operate your boat in our bays, you are always either running in shallow

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
An anchor is not required equipment on a recreational boat, but a good anchor and anchor rode can save your life. Just this week some boys in a small aluminum boat with engine trouble were caught in a strong current with heavy winds pushing them out to sea. This happened

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Gold and Silver
People see Auxiliarists in uniform performing their duties and know that we are part of the US Coast Guard, but often that is as far as their understanding goes. We are the unformed civilian component of the US Coast Guard,

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
We have had several recent successful rescues in which boats sank or capsized. It is only because the persons aboard were able to get off a distress signal that they were saved. This is the time of year we boaters use to get ready for the next boating season rather than

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Sometimes things happen that are beyond your control. This is such a story. It involved 3 men aboard a recreational fishing vessel fishing near the Galveston North Jetty limit.

Here is what happened.

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
People who are not experienced sailors often do not fully understand the Navigational Rules of the Road that apply to sailing vessels, so this column will be dedicated to explaining some of those rules. I have often heard people say that a sailboat always has the right of way, but

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
When you hear the word “fender,” what comes to mind? You may get an image in your mind of that part of your car or truck that covers the wheels, or if you are a musician you might think about the brand name for guitars and amps. But if you are a mariner, then you should think

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
I remember a recent case in which a recreational vessel traveled for miles before anyone realized a passenger was missing. His body was found a couple of days later. It is important to keep a count of all passengers on board the vessel at any given time. Any time

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
The US Coast Guard relies heavily on private boaters to assist other boaters in distress. Often the nearest boat to a vessel in distress is a private boat. When time is of the essence, it is often the private vessel operator that comes to the aid of a fellow boater, and

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
“The Twelve Gifts of Christmas” is a song parody written and sung by Allan Sherman in 1963. It is based on the classic Christmas song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” and I always substituted Sherman’s gifts when singing the original classic, but under my

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
If you have ever traveled a busy waterway such as the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), then you have seen the results of crossing another boat’s wake at the wrong angle, the wrong speed, or too close to the other boat. Perhaps you have done one of these things

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Sometimes when bad things happen our actions or lack thereof make them worse. For this column I have taken a page from the 2022 Recreational Boating Statistics to identify the top five primary accident types and address them. Take a few minutes to scroll down to the table

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Base Galveston Flotilla
“They Call the Wind Maria” is a popular American song written for the 1951 Broadway musical, “Paint Your Wagon,” which was set during the California Gold Rush. Maria in the song is pronounced Ma-rye-a, with the accent on the second syllable.

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Base Galveston Flotilla
As long as the earth’s surface is not completely covered with water, there will be boat groundings; that is, the boat is no longer floating free but instead is stuck on the water’s bottom. There are two types of groundings: soft groundings and hard groundings.

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Base Galveston Flotilla
This is a list of considerations for when you are a guest on another person’s boat.
Item 1: The Float Plan
Filing a float plan with one or more people can mean the difference between being rescued and

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Well, it’s that time of year when we revert from Daylight Savings Time back to Standard Time. Using the old saying, spring ahead and fall back, we turn our clocks back an hour. Fall sneaks up slowly on us here on the Gulf of Mexico; water temperatures begin to get

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
A friend and fellow railroad retiree (we were both locomotive engineers for the same railroad) recently took up kayaking at the ripe old age of 72. He is a river paddler and is kayaking with friends and slowly learning some lessons (some the hard way). When he told me he

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
This column is about Recreational Boating Safety, and some people may think that the target audience is boat owners. Well, it is, but there is another target audience: the recreational boat passenger. You do not have to be a boat owner to enjoy recreational