Know who the boss is!

When a boating incident occurs, the first thing your boat insurance company will want to know is who was in control of the boat at the time of the incident. It seems strange but all too often (weekend or vacation boaters particularly) parties of boaters don’t actually assign someone the overall responsibility of managing the boat and taking care of its’ passengers.

Boating inevitably involves and so it should, lots of teamwork and collaboration. This is and should be great fun. Within any team there are roles and responsibilities that each person involves themselves with and the formal assignment of these roles prior to setting off on any journey is actually very beneficial from a safety perspective. Why? It actually supports a speedier and more effective response of the team as a whole in a danger or emergency situation. The boat captain has a clear responsibility to take charge and team members will much more likely know from their job title be it watchman, first mate, deckhand or chef what type of things they should be doing or what areas of the boat they need to operate in, areas which (as a result of their role) they will likely already be familiar with it!

Your boat captain and first mate should always know the boat-handling basics, therefore be aware of and understand basic boat safety precautions (see our various other articles!). Make sure you know the position on the boat of all your key pieces of safety, navigational and key functional equipment so that you increase the likelihood to know instinctively how to act in an emergency. All key information should then be passed on to others (particularly children) prior to passage, this should be done in a group prior to set-off and actually should be of keen interest to those first on board. At the same time individual duties should then be passed on and the opportunity for questions to be raised.

Finally, next time you see those daft hats, badges or T-shirts in the boating chandlers advertising ship captain, first-mate, deck hand (& scrubber!) etc, why not have some fun allocating them, they may well just assist peoples actions and response in an emergency.

Reviewed: 20/10/2011

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