Boating Safety and Operations, oriented

The state number says where the boat is registered; the hull identification number (HIN) says which hull this is, and it stays with the hull. Federal rules trigger numbering on propulsion machinery of any kind, not on length, and the number comes from the state where you use the boat most. A federally documented boat is outside the numbering rule, and states may also number boats with no motor, so a kayak can need a number in one state and not the next.

The number goes on both sides of the forward half of the hull, in plain vertical block characters at least 3 inches high that contrast with the hull, with a space or hyphen between letter and digit groups. Keep the certificate of number aboard, on paper or digitally, whenever you operate the boat. If you sell the boat, change address, lose the certificate or have the boat stolen, the owner named on it has 15 days to tell the state.

Say you trailer a boat numbered in Ohio to a Michigan lake for a week. The visit needs no new number. Move the boat's principal use to Michigan, though, and the Ohio number is honored there for only 60 days.

The HIN's 12 characters encode the maker, a serial number, a date of certification or manufacture, and the model year. The primary copy sits on the starboard side of the transom, within 2 inches of the top.

The trap is treating the state number as the boat's identity. It follows the registration; the HIN stays with the hull.

Rule: before applying a rule, ask whether it is about the registration or about the hull.

Each person aboard needs a Coast Guard approved wearable personal flotation device (PFD), or life jacket, that fits and is in good condition. A boat 16 feet or longer adds one throwable device; canoes and kayaks of that length are excused from the throwable only. Wearables must be readily accessible and the throwable immediately available. Coast Guard guidance says not to stow jackets in plastic bags or locked compartments.

Imagine six people on a 17-foot bowrider with six jackets still wrapped in plastic in the console. The count is right, but no one could put one on in a reasonable time, which is the Coast Guard's test for accessible.

On older labels, the type is about turning ability: Type I turns most unconscious wearers out of a face-down position, Type II only some, and Type III is not required to turn anyone. Inflatables come in adult sizes only, do not suit weak swimmers, and count only while the cylinder is full and the indicators are green. Children under 13 must wear a jacket while the boat is under way unless they are below decks or in an enclosed cabin, and a state's own child-wear age replaces the federal one on its waters.

Monohulls under 20 feet carry a capacity plate, except sailboats, canoes, kayaks and inflatables. Its persons line is a weight of people expressed as a head count; its weight line totals people and gear, plus the motor on an outboard boat. A heavy load can exceed the plate with seats still empty.

The trap is reading the persons number as a seat count. It is a weight limit, and the weight line limits you too.

Rule: a life jacket counts only if it is approved, fits, works and can be on in seconds.

Most boat fires and explosions happen during or shortly after fueling. Fill portable tanks ashore and fuel with the boat closed up and everything switched off; afterward, air it out, run the blower and sniff the bilge, and do not start while any fuel vapor remains.

The equipment rules target trapped gasoline: a compartment holding a permanently installed gasoline engine with a cranking motor must be open to the air or have an exhaust blower, and the label beside the ignition switch says to run it 4 minutes and check the bilge for vapor. Inboard gasoline engines carry backfire flame control on the air intake; outboards are excepted. These rules define fuel as gasoline, so a diesel-only boat falls outside them. Build standards for fuel hoses, wiring and batteries bind the builder, not you.

Every required boat extinguisher carries a B rating, for flammable liquids; the number is the amount of agent. Say you own a 30-foot boat with no fixed system in the engine space: you need at least two 5-B units, though an older boat may count earlier B-I units instead. One 20-B may stand in for two 5-B, but a 10-B counts as only one. A date-stamped disposable unit is retired 12 years after manufacture.

Carbon monoxide has no color, smell or taste. Its early signs, irritated eyes, headache, nausea and dizziness, look like seasickness, and it collects under canvas, behind a slow or idling boat and around the swim platform. Move anyone with those signs to fresh air.

The trap is starting because the blower is on. It clears vapor only if you wait the full time and then check.

Rule: on a gasoline boat, treat every enclosed space as full of vapor until ventilation and your nose say otherwise.

The federal visual distress signal rule applies on coastal waters: the Great Lakes, the territorial sea, and connected bays and rivers whose entrance is wider than 2 nautical miles, up to where they first narrow to 2 miles. There, a boat 16 feet or longer carries signals for day and night use. Boats under 16 feet, and a few exempt types such as manually propelled boats, need only night signals, between sunset and sunrise.

If you rely on pyrotechnics you need at least three for day and three for night, and a device rated for both counts toward each. Cross the mouth of a bay 3 nautical miles wide in an 18-foot boat and you are on coastal waters, where three in-date hand-held red flares meet the whole rule. Orange smoke counts by day only, an electric distress light by night only. A pyrotechnic expires 42 months after manufacture; an expired one may stay aboard but does not count.

Most recreational boats under 65.6 feet need no radio, but a call on channel 16 reaches the Coast Guard and nearby boats at once. Say Mayday three times and the boat's name three times, then give your position, what is wrong, how many are aboard and the help you need. A digital selective calling (DSC) radio sends your identity and position when you hold its distress button for 5 seconds, but only with a registered Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) number and a connected GPS.

Show navigation lights from sunset to sunrise and in restricted visibility, and carry a whistle or other efficient sound signal.

The trap is assuming a signal counts because it is aboard. It must be approved, in date, serviceable and readily accessible.

Rule: check the date and rating of every signal, and make sure someone besides you can make the radio call.

Most marine forecasts are updated every six hours and as conditions warrant, so keep checking. A forecast wave height is an average, and some waves run up to twice as high. Outside tropical cyclones, warnings climb by wind speed: a gale warning means sustained winds or frequent gusts of 34 to 47 knots, a storm warning 48 to 63, and a hurricane force wind warning 64 or more. A small craft advisory has no single national threshold. A watch means a hazard is possible; a warning means it is occurring or imminent.

Large waves need strong wind, blowing a long time, across a long fetch, the distance of open water the wind crosses. A current running against the seas shortens and steepens them.

Say 3-foot seas are forecast, and you come home through an inlet as the tide runs out against the incoming waves. Expect some waves near 6 feet, and shorter, steeper ones at the inlet.

Watch for an approaching storm: clouds building taller, darkness to the west or southwest, a sudden temperature drop and shifting wind. If thunderstorms are forecast, the Weather Service advice is not to go out. Use a third of your fuel going out and a third coming back, and keep the last third in reserve. Leave a float plan with a responsible person ashore.

The trap is reading the forecast number as a ceiling. It is an average, before current and shoaling add their share.

Rule: plan the trip against the worst water you will cross, at the time you will cross it.

A boat pivots about a point near amidships, and the rudder or drive turns it by pushing the stern the opposite way from the bow. The stern sweeps wide, so check that it will clear a dock before you turn away. The propeller also walks the stern sideways: with a right-handed propeller the stern tends to port going astern, and the pull is strongest when you back down, before the rudder has grip.

A displacement hull's waterline length caps its practical speed, while a planing hull lifts onto the surface. A personal watercraft steers only by aiming its jet, and a 1998 National Transportation Safety Board study found that releasing the throttle leaves little or no steering.

In heavy seas, slow to just enough power for headway and take the waves about 45 degrees off the bow. In a following sea, ride the back of the wave ahead rather than surfing down a face, where the rudder loses grip and the boat can turn broadside.

Dock against the wind and current with only enough way on to steer, lines and fenders rigged before you arrive. Anchor off the bow, never the stern, which can swamp the boat, with five to seven times the depth plus the bow's height in line. Consider 10 feet of water and a bow 2 feet up: you need 60 to 84 feet of line. Set the anchor by backing down slowly.

The trap is reversing hard to stop or turn. Astern, the propeller swings the stern before the boat answers the helm.

Rule: plan every maneuver around where the stern will go, and approach anything solid slower than feels necessary.

A typical three-blade propeller turning at 3,200 rpm can strike about 160 times a second, so shut the engine off when people are in the water near you. On a boat under 26 feet with at least 115 pounds of static thrust, federal law also requires you to wear the engine cut-off switch link on plane or above displacement speed. The exceptions are a main helm inside an enclosed cabin and a boat with no switch that was not required to have one. If you are thrown from the helm, the link stops the engine.

Imagine a wakeboarder falling behind your 20-foot boat. Never put the boat in reverse to reach them. Circle around going forward, keep them in sight and on the operator's side, and shut the engine off as you come alongside.

In national park waters, a person at least 12 years old must ride along to watch the person being towed, who wears an approved life jacket, and you hold flat-wake speed within 100 feet of a downed skier unless the state sets different conditions. Elsewhere any such rules come from your state, including any skier-down flag, which the Coast Guard does not regulate.

Exhaust collects at the stern and under a swim platform, so no one should sit on, hang from or surf behind the stern while engines run. Near docks, electric current leaking into the water can leave a swimmer unable to move; turn off all power first, or a rescuer can become a second victim.

The trap is the reverse gear. It looks like the quickest way back and puts the propeller between you and the person.

Rule: when someone is in the water near your boat, the propeller should not be turning.

In the Coast Guard's 2024 data, 76 percent of boating deaths with a known cause were drownings, and 87 percent of drowning victims with known life jacket use were not wearing one. The gasp and rapid breathing of cold shock can make you inhale water, and it passes in about a minute. Over the next ten minutes your fingers, arms and legs lose the strength for self-rescue, and hypothermia can bring unconsciousness in as little as an hour.

If the boat swamps or capsizes, stay with it. Smaller outboard boats built after 1978 are designed to support you even when full of water, and climbing in or onto it gets more of you out of the cold.

Suppose a crew member goes over the side while you are under way. Stop the boat, alert the crew, keep the person in sight and throw flotation. Return going forward, as for a fallen skier, and shut the engine off alongside. For getting a cold person back aboard, federal fishing-safety guidance rates a rescue sling more effective than a life ring. The order of rescue is reach, throw, row, and go into the water only if you are trained.

For fire, the U.S. Fire Administration's test is to fight it only if it is small and contained, you are clear of its smoke and you have an escape route. Pull the pin, aim low at the base, squeeze and sweep. Otherwise, call Mayday on channel 16 and say it is a fire.

The trap is the strong swimmer who jumps in after someone. Even strong swimmers drown trying to help.

Rule: keep everyone attached to something that floats, and choose the rescue that puts the fewest people in the water.

Federal law puts three duties on the person in charge after a casualty. First, give necessary help to anyone endangered by it, as far as you can without serious danger to your own boat and the people aboard. Second, give your name, address and vessel identification to the other operator, anyone injured and the owners of damaged property. Third, report. Unpaid, good-faith help that is not refused and is given as a reasonable, prudent person would is shielded from liability.

A written report is required for a death, an injury needing treatment beyond first aid, a disappearance that suggests death or injury, damage at or above a federal dollar threshold, or the complete loss of a boat.

A death or disappearance needs notice without delay, by the quickest means. A written report is then due within 48 hours if someone dies within 24 hours, needs care beyond first aid, or disappears. Every other reportable casualty, including a later death or damage alone, has 10 days.

Consider a collision that knocks a passenger overboard, and the passenger is not found. The operator gives notice at once, then files a written report within 48 hours; if the operator cannot, the owner must. Reports go to the state that numbered the boat, or to the state where the casualty happened if that is a different one.

The trap is waiting to see how an injury turns out. The deadline runs from the occurrence.

Rule: decide reportability by the treatment needed and the damage done, then count the hours from the moment it happened.

The oil rule is visual: apart from what a properly working engine discharges, oil that leaves a film, sheen or discoloration on the water is a prohibited discharge, and the person in charge must notify the National Response Center at once. Soap that breaks up a sheen adds a violation, because federal rules bar any agent used to get around the oil ban. Plastic may never go overboard anywhere, and no garbage at all may be discharged in U.S. navigable waters. A no-discharge zone bans even treated sewage, so an installed toilet there is secured, for example by closing the seacock and removing its handle. Federal viewing guidelines ask you to stay 100 yards from whales and 50 yards from dolphins, seals and sea turtles; some species have larger legal distances.

At the ramp, prepare in the staging area, and put the drain plug in before the boat goes down. Before you leave, pull plants, mud and animals off the boat, trailer and gear, and drain every compartment that holds water, because zebra and quagga mussels ride in bilges, live wells and motors.

Federal boating rules give no tongue-weight figure, so take it from the trailer and hitch makers' ratings. Say a friend tells you federal law requires breakaway brakes on your boat trailer. The federal rules on safety chains, breakaway brakes and lamps bind commercial vehicles, so for your private trailer the answer is in your state's law.

The trap is citing a truck rule as boat-trailer law. It shows sound practice, not your legal duty.

Rule: nothing that leaves your boat should show on the water, and nothing that leaves the ramp should carry the lake with it.

Coast Guard officers may board any vessel subject to U.S. jurisdiction at any time, and state and local officers also board; when hailed, stop or maneuver as directed.

An officer who finds an especially hazardous condition can terminate your voyage. The conditions include too few life jackets or extinguishers, an overloaded boat, missing navigation lights at night, fuel leaking or pooled in the bilge, failed ventilation or backfire flame control, and an operator apparently impaired by alcohol or drugs. You may be told to fix it on the spot, go to a dock or mooring, or stop using the boat until it is fixed. Suppose an officer stops you after sunset with dead navigation lights: you can be sent to a dock until they work.

Under federal rules a recreational operator is under the influence at a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent or more, or at any level where impairment is apparent; a state's own statutory limit replaces that figure on its waters. Sun, wind, noise, vibration and motion cause fatigue that speeds impairment afloat. Operating so as to endanger life or property can bring a federal civil penalty, and gross negligence is a crime.

Around a U.S. naval vessel longer than 100 feet lies a 500-yard protection zone. Inside it, hold the minimum speed that keeps a safe course, and come no closer than 100 yards without permission, requested on channel 16. A violation is a felony.

Boater education rules are state law, and the Coast Guard notes that, on average, 74 percent of fatal incidents happen on boats whose operator had no formal instruction.

The trap is treating 0.08 as a safe line. Apparent impairment is enough at any level.

Rule: before you leave the dock, run the boarding officer's list yourself: papers, life jackets, extinguishers, signals, lights and a sober operator.