The course, which is approved by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and meets state boating safety education requirements, can be taken at the student’s own pace. After passing the exam, they can print their own certificate of completion for immediate use and will receive a lifetime card from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The course provides video demonstrations and sample common boating situations for students to interact with to better understand how to evaluate real-world instances. The learning experience includes storylines where the student “boats” to various places and includes interactive learning tools like flashcards and drag-and-drop features to enhance learning and retention. Course-takers will be able to design and name the virtual boat that takes them through the course and map how far they’ve “traveled” within it.
In the state of Florida, anyone born on or after January 1, 1988, who operates a vessel powered by 10 horsepower or more must pass an approved boating safety course and have in his/her possession photographic identification and proof of boating safety education completion issued by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The online BoatUS Foundation boating safety course and exam are approved by the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators (NASBLA) and recognized by the U.S. Coast Guard as exceeding the minimum requirements for the National Recreational Boating Safety Program.
“NASBLA approval of our Florida Boating Safety Course is a meaningful investment in boater safety, said Lynne O’Hearn, Program Manager at BoatUS Foundation. “Boater education is one of the most effective ways to prevent accidents, and this course gives Florida boaters the opportunity to build their skills to better enjoy Florida waterways safely.”
About BoatUS Foundation for Boating Safety and Clean Water:
The BoatUS Foundation for Boating Safety and Clean Water is a national leader promoting safe, clean and responsible boating. Funded primarily by donations from the more than 740,000 members of Boat Owners Association of The United States (BoatUS), the nonprofit provides innovative educational outreach directly to boaters and anglers with the aim of reducing accidents and fatalities, increasing stewardship of America’s waterways, and keeping boating safe for all. A range of safe and clean boating courses – including the nation’s only free online boating safety course – can be found at BoatUS.org/Courses.
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Spiral of Life lies trapped on a beach in Portugal in early December.
We’re not supposed to call ’em attacks because that, I guess, would be prejudicial. “Interactions” is better, we are told.
So, let’s just say it: Orcas are the ones that have been doing the interacting and withextreme prejudice, as they continue to ram sailboats off Iberia’s Atlantic coast. There have been a reported 700 of these non-attacks since 2020.
The latest interaction was a doozy. The headline-writer hadn’t gotten the memo: “Scary Moment as 30 Killer Whales Attack Family’s Yacht.”
Can you imagine? Thirty of them!
Except, it’s likely untrue. Most of the Orca incidents have involved a half dozen or so of the animals, dubbed the “Gladiator Pod,” but six or seven is bad enough.
The headline-writer must have been including every orca in a 500-mile radius in that interaction, because there is no record of Michael and Laura of Spiral of Life Sailing (yes, a YouTube channel) asserting that number.
Gladiators have been credited with sinking six or seven vessels, but without killing or injuring any humans (after which must be added the obligatory) —yet. Most of the sinkings appear to have happened from heavy blows to spade rudders typical on modern cruising craft.
According to a December 30 article in the Independent, the Dutch couple was sailing between Porto and Lisbon “when their vessel was ‘violently’ buffeted by orcas at around 5 a.m.”
“I disengaged the autopilot and grabbed the wheel and then we got hit again. The hit ripped the wheel out of my hands for a moment,” Michael said in a video about the incident. “I grabbed it back as fast as I could, and then I heard it—right next tothe boat—splashing and that heavy breathing you never forget once you’ve heard.”
(You can watch the episode below.)
Having heard that orcas prefer deep water, they steered the Bavaria 46 toward the Portuguese coast. In the terror and chaos of the moment, however, they forgot how close to shore they were to begin with. Spiral of Life ran up onto the beach and flopped on her side, having been herded aground by swimming animals said to have the thought processing abilities of a human ninth-grader.
With the help of locals, Michael and Laura were able to recover their boat and are having repairs made.
Boom! Just Like That
Meanwhile, a growing number of European sailors are adopting what you might say are teenage tactics to deal with a teenage threat. They are throwing firecrackers at the whales—the kind that will explode underwater.
Think 1943: Destroyers versus Uboats.
As EuropaSur has reported:
Frequent orca attacks in the Strait of Gibraltar and the Gulf of Cádiz have led to a surge in sales of water fireworks in shops like those in Algeciras, despite the fact that it is forbidden to carry them and even more so to use them to scare away these or other marine animals.
Consumer fireworks are generally illegal in Portugal, so cruisers are stocking up in the Galicia region of Spain in the north or Andalusia in the south. Petardos, as they are called, are even sold at nautical chandleries.¹
Confronted by orcas, sailors have tried dumping sand or diesel fuel, activating pingers or motoring in reverse. No joy.
According to yet another YouTube sailor, a sensible sounding guy who goes by the handle Reversing Entropy, fireworks are the only “anectdotally proven” countermeasure.²
Every report you hear about people using this, you know, mouth to mouth, people are not putting this on the internet because, you know, it’s illegal. But everyone’s story seems to end the same way. They deploy the firecracker inside of the water and the orcas just swim away.
We don’t want to hurt them. We don’t want anything bad to happen to them. We just want them not to sink our boat. This practice seems to be so effective that I hear from reliable sources that you can now buy in Spain in chandleries a kit that comes with the firecrackers and a big pole. You attach the firecracker to the front of the pole and you immerse them into water, let it explode, and then, you know, get it back.
As it happens, orcas are extremely sensitive to sound and rely on it for hunting, communication and navigation using echolocation. And sound travels very efficiently underwater.
A January 19 story in the U.K.’s Daily Mail quoted a study of the orca pod in question (lead by a female that scientists call White Gladys), which noted that the Gladiator Pod is an unusually quiet bunch:
Orca pods are typically very vocal, especially when they are hunting or playing, but White Gladis and her team pulled apart stranded yachts in eerie silence.
However, scientists have now discovered that this is merely a tactical choice. Like most pods, the orcas that live around Ibera and the Strait of Gibraltar specialise in hunting a single type of prey.
Because these killer whales are experts in tackling the alert and flighty tuna, they have learned to hunt in silence and avoid any noise that might startle the fish.
Naturally, the depth-charging of whales is driving environmentalists and animal rights groups crazy. Some sailors are against it, too, arguing that Gladys and crew will treat it as an escalation and respond by increasing the ferocity of their interactions.
Which is giving orcas a lot of credit, but hey…who knows?
“All you firecracker supporters are doing is making the attacks increasingly ferocious, and you’ll be justifying the use of more powerful explosives. Sadly, it’s already happening,” a Norwegian sailor wrote on an online forum.
Did he say attacks?
LOOSE CANNON covers hard news, technical issues and nautical history. Every so often he tries to be funny. Subscribe for free to support the work. If you’ve been reading for a while—and you like it—consider upgrading to paid.
Having been “killed” in a mortar attack (in training with military flash-bangs), I can attest to the disorientation and fear that these can induce in a human being.
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Harbour Town Yacht Basin, A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, is ready for your reservation with newly renovated docks, upgraded electrical service and onSpot WiFi, also a CRUISERS NET SPONSOR. And, as always, numerous activities at the Sea Pines Resort are offered for your enjoyment, as you will see in the Event Schedule below. Hilton Head Island is absolutely marvelous any time of year.
*** Thanks for SPARRING with me on what feels like a slippery slope! ~J
If you’ve just joined our engaging little community, please read SPARS & SPARRING, my introductory piece.….and share it, if you are so inclined….that works wonders.
Each day there is frosty artwork on the outside of STEADFAST’s temporary shelter; these are two stunning examples. Is it the dust particles that create such stunning designs? Is it Mother Nature’s remarkable gift to me? A tradeoff, perhaps, as she slows progress and offers only downright treacherous conditions to do what needs to be done?
Water is our planet’s most precious resource in its many forms: liquid, solid, gas, salt, fresh, brackish; 85% of me is water as I pen this musing about the impacts of something so prevalent and accessible for some that it can be taken for granted, while others walk miles each and every day for mere survival, not for showers or luxury or houseplants, but for subsistence. Although it is salt water which flows in human veins, fresh is what we must partake of to survive; a couple was found lifeless last year, their raft adrift atop the salty Atlantic while, ironically, the fish below would even more quickly perish in a sea of fresh. There are fine degrees of difference in the water all creatures need, but need it we all do.
This flock of assorted seagulls was gathered, I think, to fend off the impending ice. They did not prevail.
In parts of the U.S last week, Mother Nature bestowed all forms of the sometimes controversial, hard-to-manage stuff; inches of intricate, delicate crystals were topped with freezing rain resulting in a crusty coating causing gridlock, cancellations, photographic opportunities and one more lesson about the powerful natural forces that control our lives.
Now, she is maintaining temperatures low enough to keep that solid state remarkably slippery and impenetrable. Each day sunshine slicks the surface, mimicking relief, only to refreeze again when the day ends. As a child I skated on the ponds of Upstate New York but never really took to the uncertainty of it all, a counterintuitive activity that encourages movement on two skinny blades of steel. In Colorado my younger self would don harness, grab axes, challenge the ice falls of Ouray to revel in the beauty and adrenaline. The final time I chose that activity a shard broken loose by my own hand crashed into helmet, nose and cheekbone, dripping blood on the crystal clear surface. My crampons may still be tucked somewhere, perhaps in my brother’s North Country basement, (they are an essential tool for winter ascents of the Adirondack Mountains), but the helmet and axes were retired. I try not to repeat too many SPARRING matches I cannot win.
Beauty and the beast.
There is still no safe way to navigate the hundred yards from where STEADFAST is entombed to our boatyard office. Yacht Maintenance Company spent a day removing the five or so inches of clear, glaciated water from in front of their main entrance. Folks build entire hotels out of the stuff! Such a stay is not even remotely appealing to this thin-blooded girl.
That same blood boils when I hear about acts committed by some members of the U.S. government entity with the same name as Mother Nature’s treacherousessential.**May this debilitating ice and that wayward ICE quickly be transformed into something less menacing and far, far kinder.
See you next week.~J
Some forms of ICE can be surreal.
I hope you value SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE. My friend Switter has a view of the world that always broadens my own, which I find incredibly valuable: Do partake.
Pamela Leavey left a thoughtful note on Substack that triggered my own memories:Some women don’t get to live soft lives. They get handed chaos, grief, betrayal, and they have to learn how to bloom anyway. They become the ones who know how to carry others when their world falls apart because they remember what it was like when no one showed up for them. They’r…
6 months ago · 26 likes · 14 comments · Switter’s World
Some men don’t get to live soft lives, either. I strive to always appreciate mine.
REFERENCES:
** In case you’ve decided to stay under a large rock for the last year (not altogether a bad choice in these aggressive times), the current President of the U.S. created Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The majority of citizens do not agree with their tactics and some are blatantly illegal as well as immoral.
-For more commentary on water’s impacts, I recommend John Lovie’s ‘Stack
Harbour Town Yacht Basin, A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, is ready for your reservation with newly renovated docks, upgraded electrical service and onSpot WiFi, also a CRUISERS NET SPONSOR. And, as always, numerous activities at the Sea Pines Resort are offered for your enjoyment, as you will see in the Event Schedule below. Hilton Head Island is absolutely marvelous any time of year.
Fred Pickhardt’s Substack is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Fred Pickhardt’s Substack that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won’t be charged unless they enable payments.
A Hurricane Force Wind Warning has been issued for a rapidly intensifying low-pressure system in the western North Atlantic. The system is forecast to deepen significantly over 48 hours, reaching a peak intensity with storm to hurricane-force winds (50–65 KT) and seas up to 11 meters (36 feet) in 36 hours. The most severe conditions (50–60 KT winds and 13-meter (43 ft) seas expected by 48 hours within the SE, W, and N quadrants of the storm center, with gales extending out up to 720 nautical miles.
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