During this Memorial Day weekend, officials are urging those taking to the water to be prepared and take necessary precautions. The Massachusetts Environmental Police will be stepping up portals of coastal and inland water bodies starting this weekend and through the summer. Lieutenant John Girvalakis spoke with WAMC’s Jim Levulis about boating safety.
Girvalakis: Memorial Day kicks off the beginning of the summer for people across the state, especially when it comes to boating. First and foremost, best advice is for people to wear life jackets. Life jackets are really made to be worn, their most effective when worn. And if they're not worn, they should be in a place where they're immediately accessible to everybody on board. We certainly encourage the wear of life jackets whenever out on any type of vessel throughout the year. That aside, it helps when people understand boating, and to best understand boating, it's good to take a state approved boating safety course. There are boating safety education courses available across the state as well as online. For information regarding state approved courses, people can go to our website mass.gov/ole, and then click on the boat and recreation vehicle safety tab. And there's all kinds of information on state approved courses on our website. It's important to always maintain a safe speed at all times. And to ensure that you’re maintaining a safe and proper lookout using sight and hearing and all other available means and to check all your safety equipment. Again, beginning of the boating season, one of the first things folks should do is go through all their safety equipment, make sure that it's in good order, make sure that it is serviceable, Coast Guard-approved and readily accessible, because the last thing you want is to have an emergency and not have your gear either immediately available or it not be up to par because it's deteriorated or expired or anything like that. So we certainly encourage people to check all the safety equipment, go through it before heading out, and then check it periodically throughout the entire season. If you're out boating with children, you want to make sure that there's somebody on board that's competent and able to watch the children at all times to make sure that they're in safe locations in the boat and not doing anything they shouldn't be doing and that they're wearing life jackets if they're required to. There is a mandatory wear age and Massachusetts for life jackets and that's all children under the age of 12 who are aboard a boat that's underway and above deck has to wear a life jacket.
Levulis: Lieutenant you mentioned checking some of that emergency gear beyond the life jackets. What are some of those key pieces?
Well, it depends on how big your boat is and where you’re boating specifically, but motorboats generally required to have Coast Guard approved fire extinguishers of certain sizes and in certain quantities based on the vessel length. Visual distress signals, again based on the size and type of vessel, if the vessel’s on the coastal waters of the Commonwealth at nighttime, they have to have some type of VDS, so flares or emergency distress light or something like that. Any type of paddle craft like a canoe or kayak or stand-up paddleboard if they're out after sunset. so, between sunset and sunrise, they're required to have at minimum a white light. Again, based on vessel size, they may need to have a baler or some type of baling device or a paddle as well. Vessels are required to have anchors, vessels over 16 feet have to have a throwable type of PFD as well. And all vessels have to have some type of sound producing device so a whistle or a Coast Guard approved air horn or something like that as well. Something that can be used to make efficient sound for at least one-half mile and vessels out after dark so sunset the sunrise, have to have navigation lights.
While we're on the topic of folks being safe while they're recreating, you know, a couple of other key points to bring up would be in order to ensure everybody on boats is safe, whoever's operating the boat probably should make sure that everybody that is on the boat at the time before they get underway, everybody knows where all the safety equipment is, how to utilize all the different types of safety equipment in the event the operator becomes incapacitated, or there's some incident or something like that, which requires use of that equipment in an emergency. If there's more than just the operator on the boat, if there's multiple people on the boat, they should go over how the boat operates. So again, in the event the boat operator becomes incapacitated for whatever reason, somebody else on the boat knows how to operate it in an emergency and how to do that safely. And we always stress avoiding the consumption of alcohol or marijuana or anything like that on a boat that could rise the level of becoming impairment or substantially reducing your ability to operate the boat safely and whatnot. It's important to know that boating under the influence of drugs or alcohol in Massachusetts is synonymous with operating your car. There's a potential loss of driver's license, fines, jail time, etc.
And Lieutenant you mentioned a bit there in the differences you know, coastal waters versus say interior lakes or ponds or rivers. I wonder from the Massachusetts Environmental Police standpoint, is the approach different?
Patrolling is typical across the entire state, I would say if there is a difference, it's going to be based on the type of platform used to patrol. So we have different types of vessel platforms used for patrolling on the coast than we do inland bodies of water. Inland bodies of water, we have smaller vessels, you're more apt to see officers doing enforcement at boat ramps. Not to say that we don't get underway, we certainly get underway on inland bodies of water. But you're more apt to see officers at the boat ramp conducting inspections at the boat ramp as opposed to you know, a majority of patrols on the water. Where on the coast, you're more apt to see more officers on vessels underway doing patrols. In addition, we also have more harbormasters and marine patrol units from other police departments on coastal waterways as opposed to inland. So on the coast, you're gonna see a myriad of different enforcement entities so could be us could be state police, local, municipal police, harbormaster or the Coast Guard. On inland bodies of water it's going to be generally us. On occasion, there may be a municipality that does have a marine patrol unit that's out there patrolling as well. But generally speaking, it would be us.
