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

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Recommended but Not Required
For years now I have urged boaters to add and use certain life-saving equipment on their boats. While the regulations require you to have a life jacket for each person aboard and require children under 13 to wear

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
All recreational boat owners should take advantage of the Coast Guard Auxiliary’s free Vessel Safety Check. This free examination ensures that you have the required safety equipment, and you also receive many Coast Guard recommendations that are not

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
I have written many articles about required and recommended safety equipment, and I have included shoes in some discussions, but I have never written an article based solely on shoes and their lifesaving importance. This column will discuss the various types of

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Actors Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson had a very successful movie about creating a list of things they wanted to see and do before they died. The list of things to do was called a bucket list, as in the term “kicking the bucket.” This column is about an actual bucket

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
For those who venture far from shore in their search for boating recreation, be that simply cruising or deep sea fishing, the twin engine option is more popular than the single engine option. Maneuvering a boat with twin engines is, however, not just a little different

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
A few years ago, a neighbor of mine was fishing commercially for blue crabs by himself in a boat set up for crabbing. My neighbor had a large quantity of crab traps stretched out over a couple of miles. The crab traps themselves are weighted to sink to the bottom with a buoy attached

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
I monitor the Coast Guard rescues and analyze what went wrong in each case as much as I can with the limited information given for each incident. There is a common theme to most of the offshore rescues: the boat is taking on water and has either been swamped or

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
There are valid reasons for not following ships and boats closely. This column will address how to use your judgment to maintain a proper distance between your boat and other vessels in a following situation.
Rules of the Road: Overtaking (Rule 13)

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Although Personal Watercraft are considered boats under the regulations, there are still a few regulatory differences in the rules that apply to PWC. Many states have additional rules that apply only to PWC, and I discuss the Texas rules here as an example. You must check your own

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
This column is dedicated to my friend Mike, who at 72 years of age bought his first kayak. Mike and I both had long careers as locomotive engineers. Mike lives on the river, and he did quite a bit of research before purchasing a kayak as tailored to him as

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
2022 Recreational Boating Accident Statistics
The 2022 Recreational Boating Accident Statistics are out. It always takes about six months to compile and organize the data into meaningful tables and categories. As Sgt. Friday always said, “Just the facts, ma’am.” That’s all

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
The 2022 Recreational Boating Statistics are in. One good note: the fatality rate was down 1.8% from 2021. Another good note: the number of accidents decreased by 9.0% and the number of injuries decreased by 15.9%. Let’s look at the tables below and discuss how they

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Did you know that the US Coast Guard regulates stand up paddle boards (SUPs) as boats? Let’s look at what this means for the average SUP rider.
Growing up on the Texas Gulf Coast, I always had a surfboard. We drove to school with

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
One of the frequent types of calls the Coast Guard gets is a report of a vessel with no one aboard. Everyone’s first thoughts are that the boat’s occupants had ended up in the water, and sometimes that is the case. The Coast Guard investigates all such reports, and

By Bob Currie, Vessel Examiner
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 081-06-08
We have discussed the dangers of being immersed in frigid waters, including the deadly condition known as hypothermia. Hypo is a prefix that means “beneath” or “below,” as in below the skin. It also means “less than normal.” Thermia, of course, refers to “body temperature.” This column

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
When Hurricane Laura hit the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, we all rode the storm out in various ways. Some, like me, evacuated. I actually evacuated twice. The first place to which I evacuated turned out to be right in the storm’s path and I had to go a few hundred miles

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Below is a picture of a boy I will call Joe. Joe disappeared in the Neches River during a Memorial Day outing on the river. Captain Ryan Hall with Texas Parks and Wildlife explained what happened in the boating accident shortly after 3 pm on Memorial Day. “The two friends were in

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
For most people who live on a coast, whenever a large storm is imminent there is one major question to be answered. That question can be found in a song by The Clash, Should I Stay or Should I Go:

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
We all know from watching those Errol Flynn pirate movies that the most important person on the ship while underway is the lookout. That’s not a paid position. No one signed on board a ship as “lookout.” Rather, it was an assigned duty. Due to the curvature of the earth, the

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla.
This Saturday, May 20, is the beginning of National Safe Boating Week. The National Safe Boating Council recommends these ten safety tips for boaters:

1. Take a boating safety course. Gain valuable

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Boating has evolved into much more than just a way to get across a body of water. It is only natural that it did so since two thirds of the surface of the earth is covered by water. While operating a boat or riding in a boat is what most people think of in conjunction with

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Base Galveston Flotilla
On Saturday, April 29, 2023, US Coast Guard Cutter HAROLD MILLER had to run 60 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico to rescue two persons from a 37-foot sailboat. Conditions were 34 mph winds and 6-8-foot seas. The Coast Guard Vessel Traffic Service in Houston

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
I do quite a few recreational boating Vessel Safety Checks (VSC) each year, and I get to see the various locations where boaters store emergency equipment. Part of the VSC is determining that the boater actually has the required equipment. Another part of the VSC is

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
I recently 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

By Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
Safe Boating Week is from May 20-26, 2023. The purpose of the Safe Boating Campaign is to promote boater education and safe operation so that all boaters get home safely. Getting home safely from a recreational boating outing is simply a matter of following some

By Bob Currie, Vessel Examiner
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
This column is not about Flopsy Mopsy Cottontail’s brother Flopsy Sam, nor is it about that space age family the Jetsons. It’s about real hazards out there on the water and a reminder to always look for them.
Flotsam is the wreckage of a ship or its cargo

By Bob Currie, Vessel Examiner
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Station Galveston Flotilla
I was talking to one of my neighbors the other day, and he was telling me about how he and his wife were enjoying their kayaks. I asked if they had and used a personal flotation device (PFD), and he said yeah, we have and wear them. I then asked if they had whistles. What?