I often make the promise to not suck all the fun out of time on the water. So, forgive me as it will seem as if I’m trying to do just that with this column. The truth is, nothing sucks the fun out of boating like the Coast Guard calling off a search for a lost boater, yet that happens every day. If we want to be safe on the water, we need to be clear about one thing: The water can be a very dangerous thing.
To manage a risk, we have to understand it. When it comes to the water outside the boat, we have to recognize that it presents hazards—three, to be specific. The combination of those hazards can create one of the most hostile environments on earth. Regardless of how much we might love to be on the water, it does not love us back, because it will not sustain human life for long. If we can understand three things about the water, we can make better decisions about the risks we might be willing to take each time we venture out to sea.
Hazard 1: Water Is Cold
Except maybe in Kuwait Bay, the water is colder than you are and is very effective at reducing your body temperature. In water temperatures under 59 degrees Fahrenheit, the risk of a fatality is five times higher than in water temperatures above 70 degrees. As water temperature decreases, your ability to accomplish the things you need to do to get out of the water alive—swim, tread water, wave, yell, use signaling devices—also decreases. While hypothermia is not the greatest danger, it’s the incapacitation that happens long before hypothermia that is the deadliest risk for boaters who fall overboard. If you know that, you can make better decisions about how to prepare for and react in this type of survival situation.
The local water temperature is posted on the wall in every U.S. Coast Guard station I’ve been in. When I was in the Coast Guard, we always knew the water temperature. Do you? Do you study the sea surface temperatures? You should. You cannot prepare and equip yourself for something you don’t pay attention to. As I write this in February, the water temperature in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, is the same—39.5 degrees—as it is on the Potomac River in Maryland. The water off Charleston, South Carolina, is 55 degrees. You have to go south to Daytona Beach, Florida, to get to water that isn’t a very real and immediate problem on temperature alone. And yet temperature isn’t the only problem.
Hazard 2: Water Moves
When someone goes overboard, the speed at which the person in the water is separated from the boat can make all the difference between an easy recovery and the deadliest situation—losing sight of the person in the water. Four in 10 people who lose sight of the vessel are never seen again. This isn’t just a problem for vessels at speed. Even if a passenger falls off a boat that is adrift, rarely will that person in the water drift at the same rate as the boat. The windage of the boat, the wind speed and the amount of hull in the water can make swimming back to a vessel difficult, to put it generously. Add the motion of the water and current to the temperature and that’s a hazard multiplier, making a bad situation much worse.
Hazard 3: Water Drains Energy
Put aside the cold and currents and consider what being in the water does to a person. Though the salinity of seawater does aid buoyancy, it rarely makes it easier to tread water to maintain an airway. The hydrostatic pressure of the water on a swimmer’s body, coupled with the need to tread water, raises a person’s blood pressure. In response, immersion diuresis occurs, leading to dehydration. In addition, the cooling effect of the water—which is 25 times greater than it is in air—saps calories from your system. Essentially, water drains energy and water from you. Think about that. Water and energy. Those are two of the three things you need to live, and the water is taking them from you every minute you are in it.
Now, let’s say treading water requires about a third of the energy that a crawl stroke does. To keep up with your body’s requirements for energy and water, you’ll need about 3,000 calories and a gallon of water every 24 hours. Fall off your boat, and you’ll have none. It’s not hard to imagine how dehydration and exhaustion kills the unfortunate souls who find themselves adrift in warmer waters. This is why the Coast Guard almost invariably calls off in-the-water searches after three days.
So, I’ve presented a lot of unsettling facts and it probably seems as if I’m trying to suck the fun out of boating. But that’s not the case as all. I love boats, boating and the water, and I think you should enjoy them whenever you can. But I think too many of us lack the understanding that the thing we love doesn’t always love us back. The water outside the boat is a beautiful, awesome and soul-refreshing thing, but it is unkind to those who stay in it for too long. You have to recognize that first, because that knowledge will change the way you prepare before you head out to sea.
May 2025
