Essential Boat Safety: Signaling Distress Effectively

One of the eight required items to check for on a boat is a means of signaling a distress. An orange flag with a black circle and black square will suffice for daytime, but at night you need a bright light source. Pyrotechnics are the answer as they can produce thick smoke in the daytime and are very bright at night. There is some inherent danger involved as they do not extinguish right away if plunged in water, they will generate heat and are to be kept away from the boat and any body parts when deployed.

All flares have an expiration date whereby they must be supplemented by new ones. There is no requirement to get rid of them, the USCG certainly does not want you dropping them off for disposal. It is recommended to keep them on your boat and use them if necessary, moving on to the new ones if they fail to deploy. Every so often I will take expired flares and have my students learn the correct method of use, it’s eye opening for some of them. Just be careful when doing this and make sure there is plenty of water nearby if needed to douse the flare.