Scott Marine Surveyor Blog

Emergency Procedure Words

There are three emergency procedure words that carry extra importance when you're communicating by radio. In order of decreasing severity, they are mayday, pan-pan, and sécurité.

Emergency Words

Through the use of these words, you will alert all mariners to the seriousness of your transmission, and to the possibility that they might be involved in lending assistance. All three are anglicized versions of French words, and each is repeated three times in succession so that those who hear the transmission understand that they're hearing an actual call for help and not a discussion of another vessel's distress call.

When you hear a transmission that uses one of the three emergency words, what action should you take? A lot depends on your proximity to the vessel or incident in question. It also depends on your ability to respond and give assistance.

If you hear a mayday and you are the most appropriate vessel to respond, you are legally and morally required to lend assistance, if you can do so without endangering your crew or vessel.

Officially known as Washington’s Birthday (even though it isn’t actually on Washington’s birthday!), Presidents Day is an American federal holiday that takes place on the third Monday in February.

According to Britannica, the origin of Presidents’ Day lies in the 1880s, when the birthday of Washington—commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and the first president of the United States —was first celebrated as a federal holiday. In 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Bill, which moved a number of federal holidays to Mondays. The change was designed to schedule certain holidays so that workers had a number of long weekends throughout the year, but it has been opposed by those who believe that those holidays should be celebrated on the dates they actually commemorate. During debate on the bill, it was proposed that Washington’s Birthday be renamed Presidents’ Day to honor the birthdays of both Washington (February 22) and Lincoln (February 12); although Lincoln’s birthday was celebrated in many states, it was never an official federal holiday. Following much discussion, Congress rejected the name change. After the bill went into effect in 1971, however, Presidents’ Day became the commonly accepted name, due in part to retailers’ use of that name to promote sales and the holiday’s proximity to Lincoln’s birthday. Presidents’ Day is usually marked by public ceremonies in Washington, D. C., and throughout the country.

Aren't Inspections the Coast Guard's Job?

Unlike for cars or airplanes, there are relatively few federal regulations regarding the construction of boats.

The Coast Guard has rules regarding flotation and stability, plus engine-ventilation requirements for gas inboards, but these have little to do with how a boat is built and more to do with meeting minimal safety requirements. As a matter of fact, if your boat measures longer than 20 feet and sports diesel power, there are virtually no federal regulations that apply to its construction.

The federal government doesn't dictate how far away a steering wheel should be from a throttle lever, or how much of the view through a windshield can be obscured by supports, or any of the dozens of other safety considerations. Boat-building is largely self-regulated.

To ensure that boating remains safe and enjoyable — and to make it unnecessary for government to step in — the boat builders had to come up with an effective way to police them-selves at a high standard.

Standards + Certification

Boats are paradoxical vehicles in that, largely in pursuit of pleasure and at considerable expense, we buy them in order to drive them into a challenging environment. We take for granted that much of the responsibility for getting safely home lies on our shoulders and on our practice of good seamanship, and we put our trust in our vessels that they won't let us down when we need them.

The American Boat and Yacht Council (ABYC) strives to make sure that a boat's construction is not at fault if something does not go according to our plan out there. "

In 2003, the NMMA and ABYC joined forces when the NMMA decided to start enforcing ABYC standards through their certification process. Prior to that, the NMMA relied on their own standards, similar to the ABYC's. Now, NMMA's boatbuilder members are required to participate in the certification process. Thanks to their efforts, more than 180 boatbuilders now build to the standards, and NMMA reports that around 85 percent of the boats sold in the U.S. today are certified.

Groundhog Day is perhaps one of America’s weirdest traditions.

Every Feb. 2, people wait for a large, furry rodent to see his shadow and then we predict the weather based on the animal’s actions.

The origin story

The idea of Groundhog Day comes from an ancient Christian celebration known as Candlemas Day, which marked the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

According to the the Punxsutawney GROUND HOG CLUB website, on Candlemas Day, clergy would bless candles needed for winter and distribute them to the people. Superstition held that if the day was sunny and clear, people could expect a long, rough winter, but if the sky was cloudy, warm weather would arrive soon.

The Germans then expanded on this tradition, introducing the hedgehog to the mix.

They believed that if the sun appeared and the hedgehog saw his shadow, there would be six more weeks of bad weather, or a “Second Winter.”

Groundhog Day in the United States

Many of Pennsylvania’s early settlers were German, and they brought this tradition with them, switching the hedgehog for the groundhog, which could be more easily found in their new home, according to the Punxsutawney site.

Since then, the tradition has grown in popularity with many other cities across the country hold their own Groundhog Day celebrations. But none are as elaborate as the one that takes place at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania every Feb. 2

Happy Birthday!!

Even if your birthday doesn't fall this month, we all get older each year.

Face it, we are getting older, and Father time takes its toll on all of us.

That doesn't mean you have to give up your boating experiences.

We Just need to be a little smarter about what you can do and how.

Here's some tips to keep you safe as we age:

• Always use notes and checklists — for shutting the boat down, for starting her up, for all important procedures aboard, especially for operating infrequently used equipment.
• Keep a whiteboard and markers nearby, perhaps mounted near the helm station, to jot down numbers, way points, reminders, Coast Guard reports, weather reports.
• Always bring a mate along to be your ears in hard-to-hear situations, and someone who can operate your boat if need be.
• Reduce long trips. Leave earlier. Arrive earlier. Don't push it.
• Add extra handholds so you can grab one for every step you take on a pitching boat.
  
• Add safety lines, rails, or higher rails.
• Add nonskid surfaces.
  
• Add an electric windlass, one that can be operated remotely. Not only does that eliminate the heavy lifting associated with anchoring, it also allows you to get the boat stopped and settled before you go forward to cleat off the rode or put on a snubber.
• Remove obstacles from passageways and decks. Add steps where you have to change levels, like going from the cockpit seat to the cockpit sole. If they might turn into shin busters, use the foldaway type.
• Keep a good pair of binoculars handy to check buoys and distant landmarks.
• Invest in high-quality prescription sunglasses with UV protection and non-glare lenses.
• Wear your life jacket.

Want to lengthen your boating season this year?

Now is the time to address these six things before they go awry and force you to. If you do, you'll have much more water time.

Nothing's worse than on-the-water breakdowns -- but some things can be fixed before they go poof in the night.

Let's look at six potential problems long before they strike.

Impeller Implosion
A water pump impeller is the classic example of something that always fails at the worst possible time. Impellers are often difficult -- if not impossible -- to change while you're rocking and rolling around in the bay. So don't wait. Most builders recommend replacing the impellers after three or four years, even if they still work. My advice? Replace each impeller every other year -- before it has the chance to even think about going bad.

Bonus tip: Freshwater flushes aren't only important for your cooling system, they're good for impellers, too. Salt-covered impellers will deteriorate quickly unless they're rinsed well, so flush often.

Get Connected
Battery connections are a terminal headache. They continually corrode, getting greener and more crusty, until one day your motor won't start. And after checking out a dozen other potential bugs, you'll eventually discover it's simply a bad battery connection. Get ahead of the problem. Clean your battery terminals and connections each year, and coat them with a thin layer of petroleum jelly to help ward off corrosion.

Oils Well That Ends Well
Oil (and oil filter) changes are the number one preventive maintenance chore. These changes prevent perhaps the most catastrophic problem a boater will ever face -- engine failure. But don't stop with changing only the engine oil. Make sure the lower unit gets fresh oil each year, too.

LED the Way
Lights are other items that are sure to fail, usually sooner rather than later, on both boats and trailers. And if a bulb goes out while on the road, you could get a ticket. Many new boats have LEDs instead of the old-fashioned bulbs, but not all. Check yours, and replace any bulbs with new, long-lasting LEDs.

Cracked Up
If you've had the same outboard engine for more than five or six years, it's a good bet that you've had a fuel line leak in the motor well. That last 2' of hose between the bilge and the outboard takes a constant beating from the sun, salt spray, and rain. As you run the boat or pump the ball, that hose is constantly flexing. Sooner or later, the fuel line's surface will crack. When you first see a crack, a leak is just a season or two away. Don't wait. Cut out the offending section of hose and replace it as soon as possible.

Bad Vibes
Over time, propellers get small chinks, burrs, and dings. You may not even notice the gradual change in how your boat runs. That's too bad because a dinged prop increases vibrations in a boat, and those vibrations can contribute to any number of problems. Do yourself a huge favor -- and save big repair bills down the line -- by replacing or reconditioning your prop. When is the time right? Cup four or five cotton balls lightly in your hand, and run them around the edge of each blade. If the prop is rough enough to grab a cotton ball out of your hand, it's rough enough to cause vibrations, which means the time to fix it is now.

Why Americans still use Fahrenheit

With all these freezing days I wondered, why do we, the US, still use Fahrenheit thermometers and seemingly everyone else uses Celsius.

I came across this based article on yahoo.

Virtually every country on earth aside from the United States measures temperature in Celsius. ; Celsius is a reasonable scale that assigns freezing and boiling points of water with round numbers, zero and 100. In Fahrenheit, those are 32 and 212.

 America's unwillingness to get rid of Fahrenheit temperatures is part of its refusal to change over to the metric system, which has real-world consequences. One conversion error between US and metric measurements sent a $125 million NASA probe to its fiery death in Mars' atmosphere.

Why does the United States use Fahrenheit? British colonialism and Congress.

Fahrenheit was a great temperature system 300 years ago

Back in the early 18th century, the Fahrenheit measurement system was actually pretty useful. It comes from Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, a German scientist born in Poland in 1686.

As a young man, Fahrenheit became obsessed with thermometers. No one had really invented a consistent, reliable way to measure temperature objectively. "Fahrenheit was still only twenty-eight years old when he stunned the world by making a pair of thermometers that both gave the same reading

As an early inventor of the thermometer as we know it, Fahrenheit naturally had to put something on them to mark out different temperatures. The scale he used became what we now call Fahrenheit.

Fahrenheit set zero at the lowest temperature he could get a water and salt mixture to reach. He then used a (very slightly incorrect) measurement of the average human body temperature, 96 degrees, as the second fixed point in the system. The resulting schema set the boiling point of water at 212 degrees, and the freezing point at 32 degrees.

In 1724, Fahrenheit was inducted into the British Royal Society, at the time a preeminent Western scientific organization, and his system caught on in the British Empire.

As Britain conquered huge chunks of the globe in the 18th and 19th centuries, it brought the Fahrenheit system (and some other peculiar Imperial measurements, such as feet and ounces) along with it. Fahrenheit became a standard temperature in much of the globe.

Why America still uses it

By the mid-20th century, most of the world adopted Celsius, the popular means of measuring temperature in the modern metric system. Celsius was invented in 1742 by Swedish astronomer

Around 1790 Celsius was integrated into the metric system — itself an outgrowth of the French revolution's desire to unify the country at the national level. The metric system's simplicity and scientific utility helped spread it, and Celsius, throughout the world.

The Anglophone countries finally caved in the second half of the 20th century. The UK itself began metrication, the process of switching all measurements to the metric system, in 1965. It still hasn't fully completed metrication, but the modern UK is an overwhelmingly metric country.

Virtually every other former British colony switched over as well. These events prompted the US to consider going metric itself.

It made sense to switch over, and Congress passed a law, the 1975 Metric Conversion Act, that was supposed to begin the process of metrication. It set up a Metric Board to supervise the transition.

But the law crashed and burned. Because it made metric system voluntary rather than mandatory, the public had a major say in the matter. And lots of people didn't want to have to learn new systems for temperatures or weights.

President Reagan dismantled the Metric Board in 1982, its work in tatters. Congress's dumb implementation of the law ensured that America would keep measuring temperature in Fahrenheit.

Today, the US is virtually alone in the world in staying off the metric system, joined only by Burma and Liberia

When faced with a sinking claim, the first question to address is, "What exactly does the insurance carrier mean?

Is a trawler sinking when sitting at the dock with water leaking in through the stuffing box at a rate the bilge pump can keep up with?

Is it sinking if the bilge pump can no longer keep up?

Is it sinking if the bilge pump fails? How about a ski boat that gets swamped by waves?

Or a boat with positive flotation awash to the gunwales?

From an insurance perspective, a boat is sinking if it must be actively pumped out to remain afloat and undamaged.

This definition highlights two key issues.

First, a sinking boat is not watertight. There is always a source of water that must be located and stopped to keep the boat floating.

The second is that well-designed boats do not sink due to failed bilge pumps. A boat should stay afloat in the conditions for which it was designed without water having to be pumped out of it — even in heavy rain and big seas (relative to the size of the boat).

That's not to say that adequately sized, functioning bilge pumps are not important. In addition to removing water, they can keep your boat afloat long enough for you to find a leak and fix it. But that time should be measured in minutes and hours, not days and weeks.

When it comes to gradual leaks due to slowly failing parts, too many of the boats in claim files existed in a state somewhere between floating and sinking, completely dependent upon the bilge pump to keep them on the water instead of below it. The bilge pump merely postponed the sinking until it failed, lost power, or was overwhelmed by the volume of water. Had someone fixed the leak in those days, weeks, or months, that boat would not have sunk.