It certainly takes a lot of time. This year I began writing the column in mid May and will run it through October. By season’s end I will have written 24 columns along with working my normal duty days. In addition to writing copy I drive 200 miles between my home in Manistee and Station Muskegon, over a season that will total 8,000 driving miles. This year I cut down on the driving time by camping in my motor home at parks in the Muskegon area. This also provided me more time to write Boat Smart.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not complaining, not at all. I love writing the column and whatever demand it places on my time is well worth the opportunity to share with readers boat smart material. An ever-growing readership clearly suggests that the boat smart message is well received. I now send the copy out to 17 newspapers and publications and my Boat Smart web site (www.Boatsmart.net) now draws over 1,600 hits a month. What’s more, anyone can down load my column off the web site and run it; all I ask is they notify me, which apparently some don’t. Recently a fellow coastie told me he read the column in a major Michigan newspaper, which is not on my distribution list.

Disappointed? A little, the important thing, however, is that the Boat Smart message is getting out there. There’s so much I experience or have access to through my fellow coasties and associates in other rescue agencies that I just can’t help but take advantage of that information and pass it on to boaters. And there is one fact we all agree on: informed boaters are safe boaters. Listen, we would rather rescue boaters with knowledge than with brawn. Search and Rescue prevention certainly is the position of my command, who not only edits Boat Smart but also strongly encourages the column’s messages.

Believe me, that means a lot to me because it reinforces a rich tradition: the Coast Guard here on the Great Lakes truly believes in its mission of assisting mariners. That isn’t to say it’s always hugs and kisses. Boat Smart also allows us, to address those who boat less than smart.

Case in hand, the other night I stood on the porch of the old Coast Guard Station and watched several jet skiers blasting through the surf off the Muskegon Pier heads in 25-knot winds and 6-foot seas. I followed their position by the jet ski’s white wind-driven spray that brushed the blue horizon as their tiny forms rocketed over waves. I glanced at my watch; it read 6:05 p.m. Should they become disabled offshore, our chances of locating them after dark would be slim. At 6:40, after supper, I returned to the porch to see that they were still frolicking in harm’s way. Worse yet, three more jet skiers were cruising by the station, outbound to join them.

That was it! This foolishness would not happen on my watch. No way was I going to spend the night searching for those who boated less than smart! By the way, Michigan state law requires jet skies to park it an hour before sunset, and obviously with good reason.

By the time my crewman and I slapped on our gun belts and launched the boat; all five skiers were steaming down the Muskegon channel- safeward bound. Either they were reading my mind or they understood the dangers at hand. I advised them as they passed by the station why we had launched. I don’t know whether that was a good thing or not, since they may in the future figure we’re omnipresent.

Some times we are and others not. Boat Smart then strives to share with boaters those times when the difference between life and death hinges not on a rescuers but on how the boater deals with the emergency, or better yet avoids it in the first place. That’s why we harp on life jackets. In the last year, we can cite a half dozen cases where people were saved because they wore life jackets, but twice as may cases where they died because they didn’t.

That said, let me share a personal side of Boat Smart- my upbringing. My mother Margaret, who has written over two-dozen books, once told me why she doesn’t hire researchers: " Because I lose touch with the people that make the story." My dear father, Neil, was a newspaper reporter and columnist for the Hearst Syndicate for over 30 years and like my mother was renowned for his skill of getting to the source of a story. My dad could sniff out a good story like few in the newspaper business. Perhaps, that’s why I write Boat Smart. With writers blood like that coursing through my veins, what choice do I have but to report and tell a good story and what better story could one tell than to- Boat Smart.

Boat Smart runs on the internet at www.boatsmart.net, includes Lake Michigan weather and water temperatures.

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Boat Smart is now on the Internet: www.boatsmart.net (includes Lake Michigan water temperatures and local weather).

Use channel 16 for emergencies, and channel 9 for calling fellow boaters.