From the Captain of the Port

By Vincent Pica, Commodore, First District, Southern Region (D1SR), United States Coast Guard Auxiliary Going back centuries, journals of seafarers are peppered with language indicating that they knew the Earth was round.  “In the offing” meant, and means today, the waters you can see from where you are to the horizon.  “Ahoy, captain, vessel off the starboard bow! Hull down, sir,” might yell the lookout from the crow’s nest aloft. This meant that all he could see…

When I teach seamanship courses to private boaters on the south shore of Long Island, I note that, if you boat in our local waters and have never run aground, you’re lying. Even USCG regulars have been known to “touch bottom” at times in these waters… I also note that God left a lot of sand on the south shore and not so much water – and plenty of water on the north shore/Long Island Sound but lots of rocks… So, the issue is not if you run aground but what you do afterwards.

This column is about rip tides, rip currents and undertows – which are what distant storms often leave us.

Back in the fall, we talked about how to get the boat ready for a long, cold winter. Time and tide is now on our side. So, before you start your engines, ready the boat!

Among the various locator devices is one that used be known as a Personal EPIRB or “PPIRB.” This is what we now call a “PLB” or Personal Locator Beacon. You wear it on your person. It also has a built-in GPS.

There is a tremendous amount of data on “righting moments,” centers of buoyancy and gravity, thanks to the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard, amongst many institutions that literally live and die by these metrics.

A Master or individual in charge of a vessel shall render assistance to any individual found at sea in danger of being lost, so far as the Master or individual in charge can do so without serious danger to the Master’s or individual’s vessel or individuals on board.

Ice is unpredictable and dangerous. While the Coast Guard understands winter recreation on the ice around our area is a tradition, it is important to take safety measures:

Even if you hand off your boat to your dockmaster and say, “See you in the spring,” there are some tips in here that you will want to be aware of.

A hurricane is, in the words of scientists, an organized rotating weather system that develops in the tropics. Technically, it is a “tropical cyclone” and it is classified as one of three states, with hurricanes being further classified into levels of destruction…