Check Your Safety Equipment

The last weekend of May we stopped way offshore just to take in the sun for a bit and relax on the glass smooth water. Way out in the distance we could see a dot and we could hear an air horn going off at a continuous steady pace. Although several boats passed between our boat and the boat honking the air horn ... no one stopped. We decided we should investigate so we fired the boat up and headed towards the dot on the horizon. As we got closer the couple on the boat began waving frantically. So it turns out their small jet boat had conked out on them. Both their cell phones had died. They had no charts or safety equipment except for the air horn. They had been sitting out in the water for several hours and no one came to help. They had their bathing suits only, and it was getting late in the day. Although the the day had been a beautiful sunny day with little wind, it was coming to an end an the late May water temps were still chilly and the nights were still dipping down near single digit temperatures. Not a great situation to be broke down offshore in a an open boat in bathing suits without safety equipment at that time of year. It would have been a long cold sleepless night for them. It took us about three hours towing them to shore at about 10 knots.
Luck was with them that afternoon when they got rescued. A few more hours and the window for other boats finding them would have closed and night would have descended on them. Their first boat ride of the season could have turned tragic very easily. Hypothermia was a possibility, but even higher risk situation would have been if the weather had turned and the wind came up. Anyways ... every boat should have the requisite safety equipment on board and boats planning on travelling well offshore should have lots of extra signalling devices like rocket flares, parachute flares, smoke flares and hand held day light flares. No boat should be way offshore like that without a VHF radio. Handheld portable VHF radios are less than $200 and an essential lifesaver in many situations. Safety equipment is cheap insurance. Don't go out without it. Better yet double up on important things like having on-board a second VHF radio and some warm clothing, a good high intensity spotlight, water and all those past dated flares so you can put on an incredible fireworks show should you get stranded out on the water. On our boat, a second plot charter, paper charts and two or more of everything on the safety list (including extra fire extinguishers and boat plugs) are considered standard equipment.