The speaker today was Ron Murphy, he teaches boat safety classes that lead to getting your boating licenses. His job also inspects vessels and work with the coast guard, especially in their training by providing them with broken vessels. Since we live on the coast most kids probably already knew this, but I didn't know that the starboard side was on the left, which has a green light on it, and the port side is on the left, which has a red light on it. Some more boat terms mentioned were the gunnel (top of the boat), the freeboard is the space between the gunnel and the waterline, and the bottom of the boat to the waterline is the draft. He showed us many examples of life jackets, but there are two main branches which are the throwable and the wearable. The first life jacket shown was wearable, it was the thickest wearable and he said it was designed to keep you afloat for the longest period of time and flip your face up if you fall into the water, this was the one meant for when you're really far offshore. Next was essentially a smaller version of the first one for when you are closer or on the coast. The third was the most interesting one which was a utility vest that had many gadgets on it. It had a flashlight, knife, personal locator beacon, some bright thick line, a whistle, and a signal mirror. The fourth was a manually inflatable life jacket that you must be 16 to wear. After that we went on to the throwables, these are always better than swimming out to a person. The first throwable was a not very practical cushion, it was very practical as it most likely won't go where you throw it due to its weight and material. The second was the more reliable, more common, ring-type throwable that comes with a line. All life jackets should be readily available while throwables should be immediately available. If a life jacket is in a bag then it does not count as readily available and your ship will not be approved. We went outside to look at a real boat they talked about maneuvers and how to signal people if your boat has stopped or is cap-sized. This got cut off early for school Christmas caroling though.
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