Boating Safety Tips, Tricks & Thoughts from Captnmike

Puget Sound Area Marine Training Charts

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Selected Puget Sound Charts with prominent marine  points highlighted.  Use as a training aid to learn the area or to find points on a chart quicker.  The area points are in a white bubble with black border, this makes finding points quicker and easier.

The charts will print in Black and White or Color.  Many office supply stores and copy centers can make large prints.  The base charts are from standard NOAA chart graphics.

Shilshole to Ballard  (PDF) – Suggested print size 11×17 inches (8.5×11 also works but type is a bit small).

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Tags: Chart Reading
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2009 Coast Guard Auxiliary Awards

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

I was honored to receive  two awards for my activities in the Coast Guard Auxiliary at the District 13 Division 2 Change of Watch on Sunday January 17, 2010.

The first award was for being the most active verifier of Private Aids to Navigation in Division 2.  Aids to Navigation (ATON’s) that are not owned by the U.S. Coast Guard are private aids (PATON) they are owned and maintained by private parties, such as marinas, Police Departments, dock owners, mooring buoys.  Every year the Coast Guard Auxiliary fans out across the country to verify that these literally thousands of private aids are safe for boaters to use to help for safe navigation.  The PATONS’s are checked for position,  if  they can be seen from the water, proper color, any lights on the PATON match the published characteristics and many other items.  When a discrepancy is found the Coast Guard is notified so they can make sure the owners correct the problem and mariners are notified of the discrepancy is published in the Local Notice to Mariners until the PATON is corrected.  The Auxiliary verifies 160 Private Aids to Navigation in the Northwest every year.

I received the “Betty J. Hamilton Recreational Boating Safety Award” for my Public Education efforts both inside and outside the Auxiliary.  Betty Hamilton and her husband were U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary legends in the Pacific Northwest for their service over decades.  A PDF of the introduction speech that was given for me by Wendell Brunk is below.  There is one correction to the text, the 2,500 students should read 4,000.  Instructors usually don’t get much feedback after a student graduates from a class.  Not often will a student look up an instructor and say  “the information you taught me prevented an accident last week,” so receiving this award was a great honor.  I would like to thank all the skippers and others that gave me ideas for subjects that they wanted more information on.  I would also like to thank all the students that I taught for being in class, without students there can be no class.

Prepared Text for the Introduction of the Betty J. Hamilton Recreational Boating Safety Award (pdf)

Click on the pictures for a larger view of the award.

2009 Aids to Navigation Verification Award

2009 Betty Hamilton Recreational Boating Safety Award

c/m

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Education Challenge 2010

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Marketing Public Education Classes

Marketing Boating Safety Classes

Marketing the Coast Guard Auxiliary

Best Classroom Practices

This presentation is to help the Coast Guard Auxiliary publicize our Boating Safety Classes.  The techniques should work for many different groups.

This is the presentation I gave to the Coast Guard Auxiliary District 13 at GNATS in October.  The presentation covers marketing our public education classes and best classroom practices.

Remember EVERY Auxiliary member should consider themselves a Publicity Department and pass the word to everyone they know about boating safety.

Versions prior to October 10 2009 are DRAFT versions posted here so I don’t need to send large email attachments for review.

Education Challenge 2010 – PowerPoint

Education Challenge 2010 – 4 Up PDF

The link to a Class Listing Demo has been removed after the new District 13 Web Site with GOOD class listings went live.

How to List a Class Instructions – PDF

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