Boating Safety

IT has been a great start to the year and we have scored cracking weather between wet season squalls and thunderstorms. Boating during the wet can be a gamble, let alone boat camping, because you simply can’t trust weather forecasts and it can turn nasty extremely quickly. The wet certainly came late, with heavy rain and thunderstorms on Thursday Island from mid-February. That …

GETTING out on the water in your own boat is one of life’s simple pleasures. It can be very pleasant on calm days and is even more enjoyable when you bring home a nice catch of fish. In some families, boating knowledge is passed down through the generations and as a result some young boaters are well prepared when they …

BOATIES heading out on southeast Queensland’s lakes this summer are being reminded to be vigilant for hidden dangers under the water with the region’s combined dam levels at 60 per cent capacity. After a drier than average year, Seqwater advises that lower water levels at some of their lakes have increased the danger of submerged and semi-submerged hazards in the …

QUEENSLAND-based manufacturer Telwater has issued a recall notice for a range of Savage fibreglass models built between February 2012 and October 2016. The affected models include the 645C, 655C and 655C Hard Top models. According to the recall notice, the bow section of the fibreglass hull structure on the boats may show signs of gelcoat crazing below the cabin area …

URGENT efforts are under way to contact more than 40 new boat owners to warn them they may be in danger if they take the vessels out on the water this summer. Maritime Safety Queensland Acting General Manager Capt Glenn Hale said Maritime Safety Queensland officers had discovered the boats, sold by Queensland company Scariff Boats, had the wrong, or …

We are very excited to invite you to our first ever Summer Safe Boating Open Day here at our base on Seaworld Drive, Main Beach! The open day will be on from 6.00am until midday on Saturday 27th October 2018 at 40-44 Seaworld Drive Main Beach and is a joint initiative presented in partnership with Maritime Safety Queensland, Gold Coast Water Police …

SEA-TAGS wristbands are man overboard alarm systems that continuously send a signal to smartphones equipped with it’s own app. When a Sea-Tags device is submerged in water, the communication is lost and all smartphones currently monitoring the wristband will trigger an alarm and save the GPS position at the time of the incident. It is also possible to configure the …

G’DAY, Fred, we’ve been thinking about your phone calls to us over the years – the ones where you want to know why some of the things you have experienced haven’t been exactly as the Tide Guide predicted they would be. How can it be the top or bottom of the tide if I can still see the tide running? …

MSV undertook its own testing of the Jarvis Walker block-style lifejacket model Type1 PFD of batch number WD-15-0588 (Date of manufacture: October 2015).The lifejacket was constructed with a suspected design fault of having the waistband affixed to one side only. In testing, it was found that the unsecured side of the lifejacket slipped free of the waistband when test subjects …

THE Queensland Government recently released a draft policy and guideline to support the roll-out of vessel tracking on all commercial fishing boats. Fisheries Queensland Director of Operations Mark Doohan said the department was seeking feedback around the rules and scenarios that commercial fishers would need to follow, starting from the end of 2018. “Vessel tracking is part of a larger …