A boater has a lot of choices when it comes to visual distress signals, But how does the boater who needs to make a decision proceed?

If performance is secondary to staying in the good graces of your local boating safety patrol, the Sirius Signal SOS light and a distress flag will cover the basics. If you're headed offshore, certainly add more and better flares to your list, and maybe a laser or automatic SOS light for good measure. And if you're somewhere in the middle, sticking with the tried-and-true might work for you.

None of the options is perfect and it's important to have additional  other means of signaling aboard, be it a VHF, cellphone, or satellite-based device, depending on your needs. No matter which you choose, make sure you keep them up-to-date, easily accessible aboard, and know how to use them.

There are pros and cons to each type. The effectiveness of a distress signal comes down to whether or not an observer — who may be tired, careless, or untrained — can see and understand that the light is a signal. A distress signal must be big enough and bright enough for someone who may be miles away to positively identify and locate the source. So it's no surprise that the brightest and most intense flares, the SOLAS-approved or their equivalents, did so well. They're around 30 times brighter than a standard Coast Guard-approved flare. If this was simply a question of the best flares money could buy, it'd be simple. But what if you don't need that level of performance? 

Pyrotechnic Devices

Flares have been around for more than 100 years, largely because they just plain work as a distress signal. Observers commented that they subconsciously recognized fire as a danger, especially when it appears where we know it isn't supposed to be. We know there's a problem when we see fire on the water.

Pros

• Easy to recognize as a distress signal.
• Easy to use.
• Very bright, SOLAS flares and their equivalents ranked in the top three spots at each distance tested.

Cons

• All the flares emitted sparks, which can damage your boat or burn you. Our testers used welding gloves to hold the flares, and even with that, the heat from the flares made them almost too hot to hold.
• Flares expire 42 months after manufacture, for good reason; flares become unstable over time and aren't as reliable.
• The legal requirement calls for three flares, totaling no more than a few minutes of signaling (60 seconds minimum per flare, though some burn for two minutes or so)
• The chemicals in flares are hazardous waste.

LED Devices

Light Emitting Diode devices are relatively new to the scene, and as the technology continues to evolve, prices are dropping rapidly. LEDs are durable and long-lasting, so more devices are expected to come on the market in the next few years.

Pros

• Highest effective intensity of any electronic light available.
• Easy to set a particular color, length of flash, or flash pattern.
• With appropriate power, can work for days, rather than minutes.
• Far safer to handle than pyrotechnic flares.

Cons

• Can be hard to distinguish from background lights.
• Not as bright as pyrotechnic flares. The best-performing light consistently ranked as less visible than the control, a USCG-approved, red Orion handheld flare.
• With no expiration date, batteries need to be checked regularly.
• People might not know a signal from an LED device is a call for help.
• Doesn't have the range of visibility that pyrotechnic devices have. At five miles, the performance dropped off considerably.

Lasers

Lasers have been on the scene longer than LED lights but haven't caught on as an alternative to flares. These devices are not like "light sabers" you'd see in the movies. Although under the right conditions, you can see the beam of light, especially with a green laser. The green Greatland flare was very popular with observers, especially at longer distances. Unlike laser pointers, which should never be aimed at aircraft (or other boats, for that matter) as they temporarily blind the operator, the flares tested emit light in a fan pattern, so the greater the distance from the viewer, the wider the fan. This pattern also protects the eyes of your potential rescuer, as the light isn't a focused beam that could burn your retina. The observer simply sees a green flashing light.

Pros

• Green laser is very visible at night, and the farther away it is, the wider its beam becomes. Always ranked in the top three by our observers, it led the field at three miles and practically tied for the top spot at five miles.
• Far safer than pyrotechnic flares.
• Compact, and designed to last for five hours of continuous use.

Cons

• Lasers are directional, so you must aim them at a potential rescuer, which means you need some idea where help might be coming from before they can be of much use.
• The green color is more expensive than the red, but it was also easier to see. The red version ranked just under the USCG-approved red Orion handheld in all tests.
• While legal for use in rescue situations and deemed "eye safe," pilots are taught to fly away from lasers.

Anna Jarvis is often considered the founder of the modern version of Mother's Day.

She fought against the commercialization of the holiday, working to protect it from "the hordes of money schemers."

Designated as the second Sunday in May by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, aspects of that holiday have since spread overseas, sometimes mingling with local traditions. She took great pains to acquire and defend her role as “Mother of Mother's Day,” and to focus the day on children celebrating their mothers

But she was not first to want to honor mothers, there were others, albeit with different agendas.

Julia Ward Howe, better known for writing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," promoted a Mothers’ Peace Day beginning in 1872. For Howe and other antiwar activists, including Anna Jarvis's mother, Mother's Day was a way to promote global unity after the horrors of the American Civil War and Europe’s Franco-Prussian War.

“Howe called for women to gather once a year in parlors, churches, or social halls, to listen to sermons, present essays, sing hymns or pray if they wished—all in the name of promoting peace,” said Katharine Antolini, an historian at West Virginia Wesleyan College

Frank Hering, a former football coach and faculty member at University of Notre Dame, also proposed the idea of a Mother's Day before Anna Jarvis. In 1904 Hering urged an Indianapolis gathering of the Fraternal Order of Eagles to support “setting aside of one day in the year as a nationwide memorial to the memory of Mothers and motherhood.” Hering didn't suggest a specific day or month for the observance, though he did note a preference for Mother's Day falling on a Sunday.

Based on an article by Brian Handwerk,

National Geographic

Reading A Tide Table

BASED ON AN ARTICLE By Tim Murphy

Knowing how to read a tide table can mean the difference between a good day and a bad one.

If you've ever waited anxiously for the twing of your antenna against the underside of a highway bridge, you know that playing with tides can be a game of inches. To pass safely under that bridge or over the bar that lies between here and home, we need to understand all the components of the tides. Along most of the coast, tides rise twice and fall twice each day. These are called semidiurnal tides. In some places, the tides cycle only once per day; these are called diurnal tides. And in still other places, one daily high tide is much higher than the day's second high tide; these are called mixed tides. Tide tables, provided by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov, tell you three important things for any given place: the time of high tide, the time of low tide, and the heights of each. But what about the times in between? For that, you'll need the Rule of Twelfths (see chart ).

WIND & WAVES

The Proper Way to Fill A Fuel Tank

By Chris Edmonston

At the gas dock or the gas station, here are some tricks to keeping fuel in the tank and out of the water.

There's really only one good way to fill up a portable tank – and that's to place the tank on the ground.

Never leave a portable tank in a boat or in a vehicle, because static electricity builds up from doing simple things such as getting in and out of your vehicle, and the friction causes an electric charge to build up within the gas line as you pump gas. Touching something metallic as you get out of a vehicle and then placing the tank on the ground for fueling is essential for reducing static buildup. It's also recommended that the fuel nozzle touch the can as you're pumping. This allows the static electricity to go through the nozzle, into the can, then into the ground. Because gasoline can expand and contract quite a bit, it's best not to fully fill a gas tank. Remember, the gas you're pumping is almost always coming from an underground storage tank that's probably around 60 degrees. Pumping it into a portable tank that could get up to 100 degrees will make the gas expand by as much as 10 percent. If you fully fill your tank, you could be looking at a sizeable gasoline spill from nothing more than expansion.

I don't know of a single tank "guaranteed" to be spill proof; most older tanks have a built-in vent, and vents are a gas burp waiting to happen. Newer tanks may be ventless, but overpressure can still be vented through the cap. The best way to minimize or prevent spills when backing down a ramp is to go slow and steady.

The main reason you want everyone to get out of the boat when refueling is to reduce the chances of them getting hurt should something go wrong with fueling. Because gasoline vapors are heavier than air, they tend to settle into the lowest parts of the boat. If your boat has an installed blower, it's critical that you use it for the recommended four minutes after fueling. Wind simply won't take away the fumes – only time and your blower will. Make sure you use a marine-rated blower as well. They are ignition protected and designed specifically for removing fuel vapors.

Properly filling a fuel tank can sometimes seem to be a cross between science and voodoo. For instance, our boat has a 105-gallon fuel tank, and a wildly inaccurate fuel gauge; we have a fuel flow meter built into the chart plotter that tells us our fuel consumption. Over the years, we have found that the most accurate tool for knowing when we need to refuel is our logbook of hours on the water. Also, we've recently installed a vent whistle (pictured left) into the fuel line. The whistle is designed to make noise as long as fuel is flowing; as soon as the tank is full, the whistle stops and you know it's full.

This article was published in the September 2010 issue of Trailering Magazine.

The Brief Origins of May Day

Based on an article by Eric Chase

Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers' Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don't realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as "American" as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.

In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Jack London's The Iron Heel. As early as the 1860's, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn't until the late 1880's that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8-hour workday. This proclamation was without consent of employers, yet demanded by many of the working class.

At this time, socialism was a new and attractive idea to working people, many of whom were drawn to its ideology of working class control over the production and distribution of all goods and services. Workers had seen first-hand that Capitalism benefited only their bosses, trading workers' lives for profit. Thousands of men, women and children were dying needlessly every year in the workplace, with life expectancy as low as their early twenties in some industries, and little hope but death of rising out of their destitution. Socialism offered another option.

A variety of socialist organizations sprung up throughout the later half of the 19th century, ranging from political parties to choir groups. In fact, many socialists were elected into governmental office by their constituency. But again, many of these socialists were ham-strung by the political process which was so evidently controlled by big business and the bi-partisan political machine. Tens of thousands of socialists broke ranks from their parties, rebuffed the entire political process, which was seen as nothing more than protection for the wealthy, and created anarchist groups throughout the country. Literally thousands of working people embraced the ideals of anarchism, which sought to put an end to all hierarchical structures (including government), emphasized worker controlled industry, and valued direct action over the bureaucratic political process. It is inaccurate to say that labor unions were "taken over" by anarchists and socialists, but rather anarchists and socialist made up the labor unions.

At its national convention in Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labor), proclaimed that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886." The following year, the FOTLU, backed by many Knights of Labor locals, reiterated their proclamation stating that it would be supported by strikes and demonstrations. At first, most radicals and anarchists regarded this demand as too reformist, failing to strike "at the root of the evil." A year before the Haymarket Massacre, Samuel Fielden pointed out in the anarchist newspaper, The Alarm, that "whether a man works eight hours a day or ten hours a day, he is still a slave."

Despite the misgivings of many of the anarchists, an estimated quarter million workers in the Chicago area became directly involved in the crusade to implement the eight hour work day, including the Trades and Labor Assembly, the Socialistic Labor Party and local Knights of Labor. As more and more of the workforce mobilized against the employers, these radicals conceded to fight for the 8-hour day, realizing that "the tide of opinion and determination of most wage-workers was set in this direction." With the involvement of the anarchists, there seemed to be an infusion of greater issues than the 8-hour day. There grew a sense of a greater social revolution beyond the more immediate gains of shortened hours, but a drastic change in the economic structure of capitalism.

It all begins with your electrical system. Your electronics performance depends on it.

Here are some key inspection points and procedures for checking your electrical and other systems.

When were your batteries last replaced? Consider replacing them after three to four years. Ensure battery terminal connections are tight and free from corrosion buildup.

 Check that the wiring connections for all electronic and electrical devices make solid contact. Terminal connections can and do come loose from normal impact and pounding when underway. Also, check that all electrical connections are free of corrosion.

Get a voltmeter and learn to use it. It can help spot problems in the making. Be sure there is no more than one volt drop from your battery terminals to the closest connection point to your electronics when the equipment is on and operating.

Replace all nonrechargeable batteries in your portable gear and keep a fresh supply of spare alkaline batteries on board.

Perform a “self-test” on EPIRBs and PLBs per the manufacturer instructions, and check the battery replacement date as well

Preseason Electronics Checks
It’s a good idea to test your marine electronics at the beginning of each boating season. Here are tips for testing your critical navigation and communications electronics.

VHF Radio
Make on-the-air radio checks. Automated radio checks are offered by Sea Tow as a public service in many areas across the country. Go to seatow.com and type in your location, and you will be advised if service is available in your area and which channel to use.

GPS
Confirm your GPS’s accuracy by making a positional check at familiar locations. Perform range and bearing checks to known waypoints. Call up the GPS status screen on your set. It is a positive indicator of signal strength and accuracy. It also monitors the number of satellites being received, which is a good indication of your set’s performance.

Radar
Confirm the clarity and resolution of short and long radar targets. View the shoreline as you leave your marina or anchorage. Does it appear as clear as in the past? Steer your boat directly at a buoy or other object and see if it appears directly in front of you or off to one side. If it looks off, your manual will show you how to adjust your radar’s heading.

Autopilot
Be sure that your autopilot holds a straight course, responds to steering commands and follows your GPS waypoint instructions. Check your pilot’s heading reading and compare it with that of your GPS while underway. If it is noticeably off, most autopilots can be adjusted by performing a simple calibration procedure, which can be found in your owner’s manual or online.

Depth and Fish Finder
Check shallow- and deepwater readings in familiar locations. Look for bottom detail, structure and fish detection to confirm your depth instrument is in normal working order. Be sure the face of your transducer is clean and without marine growth buildup.

AIS
Make sure your AIS is picking up targets in your area. Get a confirmation from another boat that your transmitted AIS signal is being received. Also, be sure your AIS is programmed to send all important data, including your boat’s name, vessel type (pleasure), your MMSI number, and boat’s length, beam and draft, as well as your radio call sign, if you have one. This information will add to your boating safety and can be critical for first responders in the event you need to issue a Mayday call. Check with your electronics dealer on reprograming your AIS if necessary.

Software
Check the software versions in your GPS, chart plotter, depth/fish finder and autopilot. Compare those versions with the latest versions listed on the manufacturer’s website. Most current models will allow the latest software versions to be downloaded online and installed by boat owners. Do the same with your navigation cartography. Some software updates can be downloaded by the user. Older chart cards can often be updated by a dealer at a reduced price, while others can be updated online.

If you’ve got an aging or damaged boat that has sentimental value, you might be contemplating a restoration.

Before you get too far, here are some tips to keep in mind.

1. Take an inventory of your tools, and then roll up your sleeves and start. It’s that simple.
2. Clean the boat from stem to stern so you can see exactly what you have to work with.
3. Remove all the water, leaves and debris from the boat. Organic material is your enemy.
4. Identify what’s broken. Seat bases? Fiberglass components? The steering system?

Here's a good time to pause and ask yourself if you know what you are doing or will you need help. Assuming you are okay, let's continue.

1. Remove the old fuel from the fuel tank, as well as the old oil from the engine and gear case.
2. Remove the old belts and hoses on the engine and replace them with new ones.
3. Check the through-hull fittings to make sure they are still properly sealed. Also check the seacocks to make sure they are in working order. Replace any broken ones.
4. Look for cracking and crazing in the fiberglass around fixtures and fittings, such as cleats. Make sure load-bearing fixtures have a proper backing plate.

Deep breathe, are you sure you know what you doing? There are competent pro's to help.

If you are still game, lets continue.

1. Old boats may have lots of rotting wood. Check the deck floor, seat bases and especially the transom for sagging, rot or decay. Strip old wood out of the boat and replace with marine-grade plywood or a modern cored composite.

Hint:

1. Go to YouTube and find at least three step-by-step DIY videos that say the same thing. These guys might not be “experts,” but they at least have experience.

If you don't feel comfortable, opt for the pro.