As a boat owner you take on several responsibilities. This is true whether you are talking about a single seater yacht or the QEII. As in most cases in law ignorance is no excuse, with boat ownership comes responsibility and one of those responsibilities is knowing the rules.

There are many reasons to apply yourself when researching the various ways in which boating safety can save the lives of you and those aboard your ship. Owning a boat gives some boaters a license to be able to handle themselves like fools, and put others’ safety at risk to no ends. When considering the ownership of any kind of nautical vehicle, boating safety must always be of the utmost concern, and those boat owners that don’t practice a certain level of these particular types of safety procedures are open to the correspondingly specific penalties of the law.

One of these practices is maintaining specific and well managed pieces of equipment, as well as taking lessons about the varying methods of first aid at sea, and by having a resourcefully critical attitude overall as you begin to take boating seriously. Some of the pieces of equipment that are rather standard these days include things like bilge pumps or bailers, radios and other communication devices of the like, and life rafts. Those items most especially required in an appropriately functioning boating situation includes lifejackets, at least three flares, throw able cushions or rings, the correct number of fire extinguishers, and a sound device.

A procedure that may save a life if a person in your party has been thrown overboard by some reason is the Williamson turn, this particular item is characterized by the motion of circling back a specific way to recover the lost passenger, and can be of the most accurate aid of going back along your previous course. Otherwise, just a simple 180-degree turn can be the quickest way to recover a person overboard, but the Williamson turn can be invaluable in the case of poor visibility or heavy weather.

The specific elements required in performing this particular action are to put your helm hard over to the starboard to add sixty degrees to your course, and when the compass reads your course plus 180 degrees, steering a reciprocal course should put the lost passenger ahead of you. In heavy weather, such a reciprocal course would prove to bring the sea astern, and in which case may require that a short approach head to sea may be more appropriate once the turn has been completed.

When we first take to the water it is an alien environment and either need to know the rules of the water or be with someone who does. Not doing so would be just as fool hardy as someone with no experience of travelling on the roads jumping into a car and heading off for the nearest motorway.