A great majority of sailing cruisers have extremely unsafe boating environments. This often results in a termination of dreams. 

But let me explain what safe/unsafe means in reference to boating.

A safe boating environment is where you, and everyone else on board, know how all the safety equipment works, when to use the equipment, and what do you do in an emergency such as a man overboard, engine failure, grounding, taking on water, or other boating specific scenarios like abandoning ship. Furthermore, you (and again, everyone else on board) know what safety checks to make routinely to ensure problems are discovered before they become disasters.

To easily define the entire boat safety environment, this graphic below provides all the pie pieces that need to come together to make a unified whole.

Most boaters ensure they follow the legal requirements for boat safety and that’s very important. However, there are six core areas I’m going to explain that will majorly change the way you think about boat safety.

My aim is to help you reduce the likelihood of disasters and be far more prepared for the most common boating safety problems.

I’m Simon Brown and my family and I have been sailing full-time for over eight years covering over 40,000 miles. Aside from teaching the liveaboard sailing lifestyle to guests on our boat, Britican, we create guides, checklists, blueprints, and resources to help people become more confident boat owners and operators.

So what are boaters missing when it comes to creating a safe boating environment?

Many boaters do what’s necessary to ensure their boat is compliant with the law. They do things like get the correct quantity and style of life jackets, ensure they have the right certifications, and tick all the compliance checkboxes. 

What they don’t do, however, is ask themselves is this all that is needed to ensure that they and their partner/family/friends/crew are safe.

Furthermore, a safe boating environment isn’t just for the passengers. What about the boat? Is there equipment or systems in place to ensure the boat survives a safety calamity?

Let me explain our safety blueprint to you so that you can better make sure you, your partner, and your boat avoid disasters.

You might be thinking that you know everything there is to know about boat safety but I assure you there are several things you can do right now that will provide you with more power and confidence to create a truly safe boating environment so keep reading.

Before I explain the Blueprint, let it be known that being legal is nowhere near being safe. Following rules and regulations is the bare minimum. Being legal doesn’t help you know what to do if your steering fails nor does it help you if you are taking on water.

Ticking all the compliance boxes doesn’t help your partner know how to retrieve you if you fall overboard.

Having X amount of lifejackets doesn’t help when you have to deal with engine failure.

And speaking of lifejackets - just because you have them doesn’t mean that everyone knows how to use them. They might seem self-explanatory but I’ve seen more people wear them improperly than not!

So, let's cover the steps to take to create a safe boating environment. 

To do your own boat safety audit.

A Boat Safety Audit will help you understand where you are on a safe boating environment continuum. Are you super safe or not? By completing a boat safety self-audit (do it yourself) you can determine what safety equipment you already have and what state it’s in (has it been serviced recently?). You can also figure out what’s missing.

Completing an audit is important because you then know the playing field. Once the audit is filled out you know exactly where you stand and where you need to get to.

Safety equipment knowledge. 

If you don’t know how to use your safety equipment, or where to find it, what’s the point of having it? By systematically going through every bit of equipment you have, you can understand how to use it, if and when it needs to be serviced, and when to use it. 

Have procedures on how to use your equipment and perform common boat safety procedures. 

Not only do you need to know how all the safety equipment works, you, and everyone else on board, need to know how it fits into safety procedures.

For example, your life raft is deployed by pushing it overboard while having the painter (rope tied to the life raft) attached to the boat. Once deployed, if you have an abandon ship procedure, you’ll know the next steps are to put life jackets on, grab the grab bag (with EPIRB, passports, wallets, etc.), attach water jugs, strongest person to get into raft first, and so forth.

For a man overboard (on a sailboat with full sails up), if you have a procedure, you’ll know to go into a beam reach (if not already), pull the sails in tight, heave-to while putting the engine on, and then drift down to the casualty lining them up along the side of the boat blocking the wind and waves.

In this example, the equipment to be used includes the life rings, dan buoy, MOB button, throw rope and perhaps the MOB lift. So, knowing how all the equipment works and having set procedures is mandatory for creating a safe boating environment.

This is key because if you don’t know how the equipment works or what the procedure is you’re more likely to take longer or simply do the wrong things. And we’re not talking about small things here. We’re talking about saving a live or lives and/or the boat!

Boat policies can help you prevent common boating issues. 

Think of policies or boat rules as my boat, my rules. You create these to reduce the likelihood of injury, illness, and accidents. Over the years I watched guests become easily dehydrated so I created a ‘Hydration Policy’. The policy requires all our guests to make sure they have a full bottle of water and drink it throughout the day. I also have them take hydration drops if they get a headache (first sign of dehydration). We also have a shoes on deck policy and several others. Rules are created to prevent common boating issues. 

Use tried and tested proactive boat safety checklists.

Following on, and keeping in theme with prevention, another component of The Boat Safety Blueprint are tried and tested checklists to ensure you’re routinely checking not only your safety systems but all the mission-critical systems and structures that enable you to operate successfully (engine, rigging, equipment checks). 

Before we head out on EVERY Passage we have checklists that we follow. One is for the engine, another is for safety equipment and we also check the rigging. These checklists aren’t onerous…they’re just part of the process. On several occasions, we’ve caught something that could have turned into a disaster before it did. On a boat, it’s far better to be preventative rather than reactive! 

Your personalized Boat Safety Manual.

Finally, and I’ve hinted at this all along. If it’s only you who knows how everything works and understands what to do if a disaster happens that’s not enough. Everyone onboard needs to have a certain level of understanding and experience. How can you make that happen?

You can have a boat safety manual that lists all your equipment, how it works, and what procedures to follow. Additionally, if you have a boat safety briefing, you can follow it each time a new guest comes on board prompting you to tell them how everything works and when to use it. 

The main thing to understand here is that YOU might fall overboard and someone is going to need to get you. Further…if everyone on board knows what they need to do you can work as a team and make things happen quicker and easier.

You might be thinking, ‘Oh…nothing bad will happen to us,’ or ‘If we have an issue, I’ll just call for help.’

I hope nothing bad ever happens to you. But if something is going to happen, wouldn’t you rather be prepared for it? And calling for help - it’s not like you can call 911 and someone comes out in five minutes. Often it takes hours, if not days, to get assistance.

My wife and I created this Boat Safety Course & Manual, based on the Safety Blueprint, to provide you with everything you need to create your own safe boating environment in just one week. 

What makes this course and manual so special is that it will teach you how the majority of boat safety equipment works, how to use it when issues arise, and what to do when common boating issues, like fire, fog, engine failure, grounding, taking on water, happen.

The course covers how to easily audit your own safety equipment, equipment instructions, safety procedures, policies that you may want to take on as your own, and preventative checklists to reduce and hopefully eliminate disasters.

Further, you’ll have a full 70+ page Boat Safety Manual Template to keep on your navigation desk for guests. The manual is fully customizable and will take only a couple of hours to make your own.

OUTCOMES TO EXPECT:

• quickly discover, with certainty, what safety equipment you have versus what you need.
• learn how all your safety equipment works, when to use it, and how to service it. 
• gain an insight into step-by-step procedures covering all the common boating issues that you're going to face (so that you know how to easily face them or prevent them!)
• create your own rules to ensure accidents, illnesses, and issues are avoided. 
• start preventative safety checks using proven checklists to prevent issues before they become disasters.
• immediately have on hand a full-fledged easy to digest working safety manual for all to use.
• most importantly, if a loved one or your boat is in harm’s way you, and everyone else on board, will know what to do helping to ultimately save a life and/or the boat.

The secret to our boat safety success comes down to the fact that we created our own system of safety. We realized that the legal requirements and the safety that sailing schools teach (like RYA and ASA) aren’t enough.

The reason we have a safe boating environment is that we want our loved ones to be safe and enjoy boating. If a disaster does strike, we want to be prepared.

When we were first figuring this safety stuff out, we didn’t know what we didn’t know and the rules/regulations and sailing schools came up lacking. Furthermore, we were overwhelmed by the new lifestyle we entered. We realized that something better needed to be created.

And that’s why we created our own Boat Safety Blueprint and eventually our Boat Safety Course & Manual. 

Putting a value on this course is impossible. What’s the price of saving a life, avoiding an accident, or ensuring your boat stays afloat? What's the price of knowing that you know what you need to know?

We charge $1,500/day (with a three-day minimum) to personally instruct boat owners on safety equipment, auditing, and setting up procedures, rules, and checklists. And that’s when we have space in our calendar. Our in-person mentoring calendar is fully booked for over a year. 

Creating a way to share our Boat Safety Blueprint by turning it into a course made sense and now allows us to share it at a reduced cost. 

Because we’re able to enable you to learn yourself and provide you with the instructions, procedures, checklists, and documentation to make things happen fast for you, pay only $347. And this is our special launch price. It will be increasing. 

So, at this point, you have two choices. You can do nothing or you can take what you’ve learned thus far and prepare yourself and your boat to be as safe as you can make it. 

Guarantee – In 30 days, if you wouldn’t jump into shark-infested waters to keep our videos, manuals, and bonuses, we’ll return every dollar you paid and we will work with you over emails/zoom/phone to determine what’s missing so to personally work with you until you achieve the level of boat safety you’re looking for. 

There are only 200-course spots that will be released at this time. It’s our first launch and to ensure it goes smoothly we’ll close enrollment after 200 people. That way we can follow up, make changes, and determine if anything is missing.

You, of course, will benefit from any future changes/additions and you’ll be notified of updates for the lifetime of this course. When 200 courses have been sold a waiting list will be created but the price will increase.