Our last Carefree Boat Club training blog covered Ignition Safety Switches. As a follow up. this week’s #TrainingThursday will cover Water Sports Safety. We will cover best practices for boaters towing a water skier, wake boarder or any other boat towed sport.

Boat Towed Sports – Best Practices

A boat towing a water skier or wake boarder on the water needs to be very careful of distance. Typically, there should a be 200 foot wide skiing space and the water should be at least 5 to 6 feet deep. The tow boat should also be at least 100 feet from docks, swim areas, the shore and other water skiers or wake boarders.

It is also recommended that the water skier or wake boarder wear a Personal Flotation Device (PFD) regardless of their ability to swim.

The tow boat must also contain at least two people. One person designated to driving the boat and the other for watching hand signals from the water skier or wake boarder.

Other types of towed water sports:

• Discing
• Skurfing
• Towed Hydrofoiling
• Tubing
• Wakeboarding
• Skiing

Hand Signals

Hand signals are an extremely important part of water skiing, wake boarding or any other boat towed sports. Not only can yelling be dangerous and unreliable but it can also be near to impossible to hear. That is why a uniform method for communicating to the boater when you’re on the water has been developed over the years.

However, it is encouraged that if you’re participating in a water sport, in the very least develop a non-verbal form of communication with your signal watcher in the following areas:

• Stop
• Speed Up
• Turn
• I’m Okay
• Skier in the water

Here are additional recommended forms of communicating through hand signals from BoaterExam.com:

 

Tune in to our next training blog! 

(Images and lessons sourced from Boats.com, Wikipedia, About.com and BoaterExam.com)

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