Article published Apr 29, 2006

Morgan Stinemetz

Education is the answer to reducing boating deaths

Eighty people died last year in boating-related accidents in Florida. The stated reasons for the accidents -- all of which were thoroughly investigated -- were as varied as clouds in the sky. On the other hand, the one underlying contributory factor, the common thread, the connecting link, was incipient boater stupidity.

I make this point because people don't intentionally go out boating to die. People go boating to enjoy a few hours of fun. The fact that 80 of them passed on to their final reward last year is preventable, but only an informed boating public that understands the risks associated with boating can reduce the number of deaths.

The article about the boating deaths that I read in this paper on April 21 said: "The FWC (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission)is gearing up to launch a statewide boating safety campaign, and officials recommend that people take a boating education course, especially if they have no boating experience."

Sorry, folks, but verbiage like that is just so much pablum. Gearing up to head off deaths after they have hit the highest number in a decade is like closing the barn door after the horse is gone. People's stupidity will go on killing themselves and others, no matter what the FWC does.

If this state, which has the best boating climate in the nation -- hurricane season excepted -- wants to keep boating deaths down, it should support an ongoing program of boater education that demonstrates the risks involved in boating in ways that are memorable, and the course must be presented by people who can capture the attention of the enrollees.

Obviously, what we have in place now, voluntary compliance and enrollment, isn't working well. I am not certain that it has ever worked well.

When I first moved to this area in 1971, I bought a 22-foot Aquasport. I had a pilot's license back then, so I knew something about getting ready to go out because I pre-flighted my airplane before I even got in it. I also knew something about navigation, but I knew little about the risks involved with boating.

I signed up for a Coast Guard Auxiliary course that was held in Cortez. Evidence of taking the course would cut down on my insurance premium, and I thought that I might acquire some cogent information about boating. What I found out was that the course being offered was so overwhelmingly dull that I couldn't stand wasting my time on it. The instructor had a leaden delivery. He droned on and on by reading out loud from a course book. At the first break, I got out of there. I studied the course materials at home, but I never got the reduced rate on my insurance premium.

And while I laud the Coast Guard Auxiliary and the U.S. Power Squadron for putting on boating safety courses, if their instructors are zeros, the course material is pretty much meaningless. My own experience is 35 years old, so maybe the quality of instruction has gotten a lot better in the interim. I certainly hope so.

Still, 80 people died last year in Florida doing something that's supposed to be fun. They died because they ran into stationary objects, overloaded boats to where they tipped over or swamped, ran into other boats or spilled fuel that caught fire. The FWC has pictures of accidents that will curl your hair. Years ago, one high-speed motorboat got airborne and penetrated a second-story condo on the lower east coast. The photo is a classic. It shows the front half of the boat buried in the building and the rest of it sticking out.

Mandatory use of life jackets is not the answer, because life jacket use doesn't address the core problem: uneducated boaters, accidents waiting to happen. Effective would-be boater education is the answer, and the insurance industry, which often pays the bills for the results of outrageous boater stupidity, ought to get off its collective behind and start its own boater safety courses. Make it worth a boater's while to take and pass the course; say, a $100 discount on the insurance premium. The state could help by requiring a boat operator to take and pass a boating safety course. When you think about it, the onus for doing so is not so severe. We have to pass a test to drive a car, and no one complains about that.

Dying while doing something that's supposed to be enjoyable makes no sense whatsoever. Overloaded boats, drunken skippers and passengers, inattentive operators and immovable objects, and boats that are not equipped for the vagaries of weather-induced mayhem all create the ingredients for manifest unhappiness in the form of human loss.

All of us who go out to sea in small boats share the accountability for making certain that we get both our passengers and our vessels back home safely. It's a duty that doesn't involve trusting to luck in any fashion. If you are willing to shoulder the responsibility of operating a vessel, get the education you need to get started and build on it through experience. If you are a "let's-turn-the-key-and-let-'er-rip" kind of person, then you are better off doing something else entirely.