National Safe Boating Week
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National Safe Boating Week (NSBW) is a program of the North American Safe Boating Campaign. NSBW aims at spreading a message of boating safety, encourages boater education, and helps to save lives. The campaign produces a variety of safe boating information intended to enhance and supplement the individual campaigns that take place through groups, associations and organizations across the United States and Canada during National Safe Boating Week.
The purpose of this section of AuxBWiki is to share best practice ideas for making the National Safe Boating Week a success. If you have done something locally or in your state that works, please let us know.
Ideas for promoting NSBW
- Time to Plan for NSBW -- February 2011 newsletter
- Flotilla Initiates Energetic Safe Boating Campaign After Receiving NSBW Proclamation (from SITREP)
Help Set an Inflatable Life Jacket World Record!
The National Safe Boating Council and Canadian Safe Boating Council are teaming up to set a world record! We are encouraging boaters, boating safety educators and anyone else who would like to join in on the fun to participate in “Inflatable Life Jacket World Record Day.” Participants from across North America will simultaneously inflate an inflatable life jacket to set an unprecedented world record. The inaugural event will be held on Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. EDT / 8:00 a.m. PDT.
World Record Day will help to usher in National Safe Boating Week, this year May 22 – 28, 2010. The goal of National Safe Boating Week is to educate and inform the boating public about boating safety, specifically life jackets. The push of inflatable life jackets has been the main focus of the campaign for the past few years.
To ensure that this event is a success, the National Safe Boating Council (NSBC) and the Canadian Safe Boating Council (CSBC) have been working with local sponsors and partners in the area. Cabelas® is the national sponsor in America, offering its stores across the county as event locations. Leland Ltd. has worked with the NSBC to offer over 1,000 CO2 cartridges to allow participants the opportunity to inflate their life jacket, but also practice re-arming techniques of inflatable life jackets. SmartBoater is helping to sponsor the event throughout Canada, bringing this important message to boaters throughout the country.
If you’d like to participate or organize a local event of your own, please visit the newly created website.
Opportunities Abound
By Harriet Howard, Special Assistant for NSBW
File:NSBW.jpg Walmart, K-Mart, Ace Hardware, West Marine, Bass Pro Shops, are just some of the retail stores that have given our PA Officers space for their boating safety displays for National Safe Boating Week. With the 2010 campaign ahead of us, let’s plan to use these stores as opportunities to meet the boating public and sell them on safe boating practices. Now is the time to contact the managers of these establishments and secure a spot during NSBW. Some of these stores may allow us to use a part of their parking lot to perform VSCs.
Other opportunities abound to reach the boating public, via the media. Download the statistics from the National Safe Boating Council’s website, to list boating accidents and fatalities for your press releases. Editors love statistics. Also, invite the TV and news media to attend your special NSBW events. Life jacket demonstrations and on-the-water rescues make great action footage for television broadcasts.
Look for the free and paid resources available from the campaign site in March. Such items as Wear It! stickers, decals and posters are especially favored by our younger boaters. For additional resources, download the Auxiliary Material Supply Center Catalog. Order through your Materials Officer.
Don’t forget to post your planned PA exhibits and VSCs on the campaign website for NSBW and even before the big event. Share your great ideas.
How to get a NSBW resources
There is quite a range of free resources available on the NSBW website.
Keeping Current
Boating Safety Online Quiz
Manitou Pontoon Boats is partnering with Discover Boating and Boatsafe.com to create an online quiz that gives boaters a refresher safety course for National Safe Boating Week, which is May 22-28.
The quiz consists of 25 questions testing a boater's knowledge of standard safety procedures, and can be easily be added to any website.
According to the Coast Guard, in 2008 there were 4,789 recreational boating accidents that involved 709 deaths and 3,331 injuries. Of the 709 fatal accidents, two-thirds of them drowned and 93 percent of those drowning victims were not wearing a life jacket.
The Coast Guard's life jacket wear-rate observational study estimates that the overall life jacket rate for adult boaters in 2008 was only 8.1 percent.
