THE LAW ON LIFE JACKETS
ONLY MANDATES GOOD SENSE
Fred Dyson – Dyson's Starboard View – Messing About in Boats
The Alaska State House and Senate voted to require kids under thirteen to wear lifejackets when in a boat.
Wearing flotation devices makes sense for all boating people. The reasons are obvious. Problems come up very suddenly. You walk up onto the bow to tend a line and the boat lurches, you get thrown against the gunnels and tumble over; the boat hits a sandbar and over you go; you get caught in a net or line and jerked overboard; a fire starts and you must jump overboard as the flames are barbecuing your buns; or some idiot runs you down. These accidents are compounded by cold water that incapacitates the toughest seaman in minutes, and by the difficulty in rescuing someone who goes overboard.
Fortunately, technology and a competitive market are making it easier to be safe. Most of the good excuses for being dumb are now gone. You can now wear a flotation vest, jacket, or overalls that are comfortable and even decent-looking. In Bristol Bay, where I fish, most of us are really dumb. We not only don't wear flotation vests most of the time, but we wear sea green raingear that is very difficult to see in the water.
As a kid, I didn't need the Legislature to save my childish neck. My mom stuffed me into a life preserver the moment I wanted to go out of the cabin of our boat. This morning ritual was so prevalent that I thought the darn thing was a part of my body. I grew up thinking I was a fat kid.
My mom's precautions were tested pretty regularly. Our boat was tied up at a dock in Portage Bay and one of our neighbors was a fireman who worked on a fireboat. His name was Norm LeBounty and he lived on a cabin cruiser that looked just like him: short and broad. As he said, "We were both built for stability and heavy hauling."
Fireman LeBounty exasperated my mom by offering me a quarter to either wet my pants or walk on top of the dock railings. Both of these activities offended my mother at some fundamental level, and she threatened him with keelhauling or flogging through the fleet. It was to no avail. In the time-honored custom of children everywhere, I was for whatever my folks were against. The pants-wetting routine was not very much fun, but I walked the top rail of every railing I could get on.
I have always been fairly clumsy but it was really bad when I was three and four years old. One time my mother sent me to deliver some freshly baked cupcakes to some people who lived in a tattered old Tahiti ketch three docks west. As soon as I was out of sight of my mother, I climbed up and walked the railings as prescribed by my fireman friend. I was doing okay until I was distracted by a family of mallards. I tumbled into the mucky water, but thanks to my mother's precautions, my lifejacket turned me upright up and floated me with my chin awash.
Our faithful dog ran back to our boat and sounded the "kid-overboard alarm." I grabbed the bobstay of a Friendship sloop as I drifted by and then spent my time trying to retrieve the cupcakes and feed the mallard chicks.
Mom used a boat hook to fish me out of the water and then used the dock wash-down hose to flush the mud out of my clothes.
I appealed to Fireman LeBounty for double pay on the basis that I had both walked the rail and gotten my pants wet. LeBounty was amused, but adamant that he would only pay for the conduct that was volitional. Two bits tops.
He thoroughly enjoyed my mother's anger, and slipped me a fifty-cent bonus later on. Please put lifejackets on the kids. You can't always count on them to use good sense.
WESTCHESTER CHALLENGE
This old man plans to start the boating season by challenging all comers to a human-powered boat race on Westchester Lagoon as soon as the ice is off. I will use my twenty-year-old rowing shell and my fifty-three-year-old body.
You can use any human-powered boat you can launch by yourself. There are a couple of college oarsmen from Anchorage who can beat me, but they won't be home in time. Kriss Thorsness, our Olympic gold medalist, probably won't be here either so the main competition could be from canoeists and kayakers.
A canoeist from Peters Creek thinks that two paddlers in a canoe can beat me if l can row a canoe.
I have been telling him that if l have to use his kind of boat, he ought to have to use my kind of body: old and fat. I think they may be able to beat me, but we will make them prove it.
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