What the Coast Guard will actually check when they board you

The orange horse-collar life jackets under the bow seat aren't a safety plan. They're ballast. Nobody wears one, they smell like 2009, and half the time the straps have gone stiff enough to crack. If that's what's on your boat, you've already made the most common mistake on the water: you bought the legal minimum and stopped thinking about it.

Start there, because it's the cheapest fix you'll make all summer.

Buy jackets that people will actually keep on

The Coast Guard requires one wearable, approved life jacket per person on board, plus a throwable on boats 16 feet and over. That's the floor. The goal is jackets your wife and your kids and your buddy from work leave on all day without complaining, because a jacket in a locker has never saved anybody.

For most inland boating, that means a comfortable vest with big arm openings and a mesh back if you've got a bucket seat. For adults who hate bulk, an inflatable is the move. A suspender-style or belt-pack inflatable disappears on you and you'll forget it's there by the second hour, which is exactly the point.

Inflatables come with strings attached, and you need to know them:

• They're only legal for people 16 and older, and only when worn.
• Most aren't approved for personal watercraft, water skiing, or anything where you'll hit the water hard.
• They've got a CO2 cylinder and a green/red status indicator. Check it. A spent cylinder is a nylon shirt.
• Weigh the cylinder or check the pin every season, and swap the rearm kit per the manufacturer's schedule.

You'll also notice life jacket labels changed. The old Type I through Type V language is being phased out in favor of icons and performance levels — numbers like 50, 70, 100 and 150 that tell you how much flotation you're getting and where. Old labeled jackets are still legal. Don't let a guy at the ramp tell you otherwise.

The kid rule is stricter than you think

On federal waters, children under 13 have to wear an approved life jacket any time the boat is underway, unless they're below deck or in an enclosed cabin. States set their own ages, and they vary — some say 12 and under, some say 6 and under. Look up yours before you assume.

Fit matters more than age. Pick a child's jacket up by the shoulders with the kid in it. If it rides up past their ears, it's too big and it'll slide right off over their head in the water. Get the next size down, even if they'll grow out of it in a year. Twenty-five bucks a year isn't a budget crisis.

And the chest strap plus the crotch strap both get buckled. Every time. Kids will test you on this. Win the argument on the dock, not at 30 miles an hour.

Yes, you probably need a card

Most states now require a boating safety education certificate to operate a motorboat, usually tied to your birth year. If you were born after a certain date, you need it. If you were born before, you're often grandfathered. It's not a license in the driver's-license sense — it doesn't expire, there's no road test, and it doesn't get renewed.

What you do is take a NASBLA-approved course. Your state agency's website lists the approved providers. The BoatUS Foundation offers free online courses for many states. The Coast Guard Auxiliary and America's Boating Club run in-person classes that are better than the online version, because a retired captain with 40 years on the water will tell you things the software won't.

Two details people get wrong. First, a rented boat often still requires the card, and the livery will ask for it. Second, if you're boating in a state you don't live in, reciprocity is usually fine but not guaranteed, especially for younger operators. Check before you tow the boat four states over for a week you've already paid for.

Print the card. Put it in the same dry bag as your registration. You won't have cell service when the officer asks.

The lanyard law caught a lot of guys off guard

Since April 2021, federal law requires the operator of most powerboats under 26 feet to use the engine cut-off switch link while the boat's on plane in open water. That's the red coiled lanyard that clips to your jacket or belt, or the wireless fob version if your boat's set up for it.

People hate it because it dangles and because it kills the engine when you get up to grab a rod. Use it anyway. An unmanned boat at speed with nobody at the wheel circles back, and it doesn't care who's swimming.

The ten minutes before you launch

Do this in the staging lane, not at the ramp with four trucks behind you.

• Drain plug in. Say it out loud. Touch it. The number of boats that go in without one is genuinely funny, right up until it's yours.
• Fire extinguisher. Check the gauge, check the date. Extinguishers made after January 1, 2017 have a 12-year service life stamped on them. Expired ones don't count.
• Sound device. A whistle on a lanyard costs almost nothing. A horn that hasn't worked since last fall counts for nothing.
• Visual distress signals. Required on coastal waters and the Great Lakes. Flares expire 42 months after manufacture. There's also an electric SOS light that never expires, which is the better buy.
• Nav lights. Test them in daylight. You'll find the bad bulb then instead of at dusk.
• Fuel. One third out, one third back, one third in reserve. Non-negotiable in wind.
• Float plan. Text somebody on shore: where you're launching, where you're going, when you'll be back, what the boat looks like. Then text them when you're off the water.

Set your VHF to channel 16 and leave it there. A phone in a dry bag is a backup, not a radio.

Cold water doesn't care that it's June

A lot of drownings happen in water that looked fine from the dock. The useful thing to remember is 1-10-1: roughly one minute to get your gasping under control, about ten minutes of meaningful movement in your hands and arms, and around an hour before hypothermia takes you under. That first minute is what kills people. They inhale water while they're panicking.

If you go in, don't swim anywhere for that first minute. Get your back to the waves, get your breathing slow, then decide. A jacket you're already wearing buys you all three of those windows. A jacket in the locker buys you none of them.

One more thing, and it isn't a lecture. Operating a boat over 0.08 is a federal offense and a state one, and the sun, the wind and four hours of chop hit harder out there than they do on your porch. Bring the cooler. Bring more water than beer. Let somebody drive who's still got all their reflexes.

Then go be the guy whose boat everybody's kids are allowed on.