Whether you are an experienced sailor or a complete beginner it’s important to never forget the most important thing about boating, and that is safety. Having a proper lookout is essential for your safety, as well as the safety of other boats and people in the water. So when do you need one?
While boating you need to constantly maintain a lookout. This means that you, or another person on the boat has to constantly lookout in the surrounding area for other boats, people in the water, and any other possible obstacle.
A lookout can mean two different things, the first one refers to the process of monitoring the surroundings, while the second meaning refers to a specific person that’s sole purpose on the boat is to look out for possible obstacles. So let’s take a look at what kind of lookout you need to have on your boat.
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What Is a Lookout
At one point a lookout was an essential post on a ship. The lookout was the guy that you saw with a binocular on top of every ship in movies.
In the present day this post still exists, but in most cases they don’t need to get on the top of the ship, now they simply stay in a cabin that is filled with monitors.
But on smaller personal boats things work a little differently, since they are considerably smaller than ships, and they usually aren’t filled with a fully trained crew.
According to the rule 5 of the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea every vessel, whether we are talking about a small pontoon boat or a cruise ship, needs to maintain a lookout at all times.
Rule 5 of the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea: “Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper lookout by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate in the prevailing circumstances and conditions so as to make a full appraisal of the situation and of the risk of collision.”
How a Lookout Functions on a Personal Boat
If you have a smaller boat, you, the driver can also take the role of the lookout.
If you are on a pontoon boat, a bowrider, a bass boat, or any other small boat, you can usually see everything around the boat, so you as the driver should be able to fulfill the role of the lookout.
The rule says that you have to maintain a proper lookout, this refers to the process of monitoring the surroundings. It doesn’t say that you need to have somebody on board that has to fulfill that role. So if you as the driver can also be a lookout.
Even if you are able to fulfill the lookout post alone, it’s a good idea to tell the other passengers on the boat to let you know if they see anything that you might have missed, or that they consider an obstacle.
How to Keep a Better Lookout
Since keeping a proper lookout is not only about complying with the rules, but also ensuring your safety, it’s important to try and be as efficient as possible. So here are a few things that you can do to help you keep a better lookout.
Instruct Your Passenger Properly
As I already said it can be really helpful to instruct your passengers to also act as lookouts. But this won’t always go as planned if you don’t instruct them properly.
So try to make it very clear for what they should look out for, in general they should let you know if there is a large vessel getting close to your boat, or if there is a person in the water that you might have not seen, or if somebody doing water sports is getting too cleanse to the boat, etc.
A lot of people don’t know what a lookout has to report so they might not know what is important and what isn’t. So you should quickly go over those things with them.
Another timp from my personal experience, if there are kids on board, you might want to tell them that they don’t need to act as a lookout, since they tend to overdo things, and they might end up pointing out every boat that they can see.
Add a Camera
When acting as a lookout and as a driver, it can sometimes be tricky to maintain a steering direction, as well as watching what’s happening behind the boat, so you might want to add a camera to the back of the boat.
You don’t need any kind of sophisticated camera, any wireless outdoor camera would work. Just make sure that the camera is waterproof, since it will get splashed a lot, and that it can connect to your smartphone.
If you don’t have a wireless outdoor camera lying around, you might want to check this one out, it’s the exact model that I’ve been using for the past two years on my boat and it works perfectly. It’s wireless, waterproof, and it can easily connect to any type of smartphone: Mibao 1080P WiFi Camera.
Make Sure You Are Visible
While you are doing your best to maintain a proper lookout, most people with boats are trying to do the same, so it’s important not to make things hard for them.
So make sure that you and your boat are as visible as possible. So try to avoid colors that can easily blend with the environment, and if you get into the water make sure that you wear a visible life jacket, orange and bright green usually work out the best.
Drive Carefully
The final thing that I want to add is that you should be careful when you drive your boat. If you go very fast, it might be impossible to avoid an obstacle even if you spot it.
Very fast speeds can also make things difficult for other boats around you, since they will have a harder time avoiding you if you make a sudden turn.
Final Thoughts
So no matter what type of boat you own you, or somebody on the boat needs to constantly monitor the surroundings.
While this is basically just common sense it’s also a rule of the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea.
Maintaining a proper lookout doesn’t require any extra effort on your part and it can only do good things, so you make sure that you or somebody else acts as a lookout at all times.
To make things easier for you while acting as a lookout you can always ask the other passengers on board to act as lookouts as well, just make sure to give them a few instructions first, since not everybody knows what a lookout should do.
Another thing that you can do is to add a camera to the back of the boat, this way you will be able to see what happens there without any effort.
And finally make sure that you are always visible to other boats, and that you move at a reasonable speed.