Tips before going out to sea safely
Whether you are an experienced sailor or a beginner in sailing, it is important to take these safety measures before setting sail on any type of vessel, including Marinemax boats.
Advice before setting sail
Here we leave you the points that for us are very important to review and take into account before going to sea.
Check the condition of the boat
Checking the proper functioning of the boat: Radio equipment, engine (oil, water, fuel), lights… As well as the good condition of the mandatory material to carry on the boat, we list the basics in terms of safety (vests, first aid kit, pyrotechnics…), we leave you a link to the DGMM with the mandatory material.
Respect the characteristics of the boat (number of seats, weight for the distribution and stability of the boat…).
It is essential to make a previous revision before going out to sail with our boat, either in our mooring point or before launching it, from our trailer by ramp or crane. This can avoid a great number of problems.
Watertightness
If we do it by ramp or crane, we have to make sure that the drain plugs are in place. When we do the sweetening process, after sailing, we usually open the drain plugs to remove the water from the bilge of our boat or jet ski and sometimes we do not remember to put them, this will be a problem if we do not mount bilge pump or for some reason suffers a problem for its proper functioning.
If our Marinemax boats are on a mooring, we will check that there is no water in the bilge and in the engine compartment. We will never start it up if the water level is high, to avoid water ingestion from our engine that causes very important damages.
Fuel
Everything we can advise you on this point will not be bad for you, but experience tells us that whenever we go sailing, the fuel tank must be full, it is one of the most important safety measures for us.
Another rule that we advise our future skippers in our courses is the 1/3 method. With this rule, it will be the fraction of fuel that we will consume on the way out, another one on the way back and another one for any kind of unforeseen event in the form of reserve.
Electrical system
Another point to take into account is the electrical system. As you will know to avoid undue battery consumption by small electrical leaks, by connection problems or deterioration of our wiring, we will always disconnect our electrical system, with the disconnect switch, which we can also call machete.
In this way we will protect our battery avoiding that it discharges and we will not have starting problems.
Think that Marinemax boats or jet skis that do not start before sailing, even if we start it with external help, it is very likely that the same thing will happen to us when we are sailing if our battery is not in good condition and has not been regenerated.
Start your engine before releasing the mooring and of course before launching your boat. This simple check will prevent us from running out of steering once in the water, with what that entails: asking for help with our boat or taking a swim to get back to the trailer or mooring on our jet ski.
If you have a low battery problem, the engine will have less trouble starting out of the water as it has less resistance and if it has no other problems it will regenerate.