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every cruise has a muster drill.

Every time I take passengers on my boat, before we leave the dock, we go through a safety drill. Every passenger is made aware of where the life vests are and how to put them on...women and children first, me last. The men are shown how to tie a line to a cleat, operate the vhf to hail the USCG & read the GPS chart to give out location. I make sure someone knows how to handle the boat in open water, how to expend the ladder and cut the motors to idle. Two people are designated how to put on a fanny pack that contains an inflatable life vest, an EPIRB and handheld VHF radio. This happens before EVERY departure. It might just be me that has a massive heart attack, or fall overboard, so the passengers must be able to handle the situation. Because when it goes bad on a boat is goes bad VERY FAST...SUDDENLY.

If the waves pick up on the way back to the inlet, we put the life vests on. Don’t care if we don’t look cool. A following sea in large waves and incoming tide makes for a potentially dangerous scenario, especially when compounding the scene with other boats with alcohol involved.

Don’t think “so I fall overboard...I’ll swim to safety”

Not if you hit your head and go in the water unconscious! Face down, you drown and sink. In the inlet, it’s dangerous.

The captain in the horrible story is ABSOLUTELY at fault. Not because the winds picked up, but because he didn’t recognize the potential dangers and err on the side of his passenger’s lives. Head they pour in life vests and nothing happened to the boat, EVERY passenger would have commended the captain for caring about their safety and when it went bad he would have saved many lives. The eisenglass should have been immediately unzipped indeed he saw that they were taking on water. Those two steps and everyone should have easily survived.

Prayers up for the family members, survivors and even captain’s family.