Mario Vittone, author of the Soundings blog Lifelines: Safety and Rescue At Sea, will be taking your boating and safety questions and answering them in a new Soundings feature called Ask Mario.

You can ask questions through the Soundings website — Mario will personally respond in videos posted to Soundingsonline.com, Facebook and email.

Go to soundingsonline.com/ask-mario and fill out the questionnaire at the bottom of the web page. On the same page you can also see other video answers, a short bio about Mario, and links to his Lifelines: Safety And Rescue At Sea blog posts.

In this first video, Mario responds to Andrew Griswold, who wants to know how often thru hulls fittings should be replaced.