The nation’s largest recreational boating safety event of the year, National Safe Boating Week, is May 21–27, serves as a reminder to boaters to keep safety front and center all season long. The BoatUS Foundation for Boating Safety and Clean Water offers three tips for boaters to be safety heroes on the water.
What Is SCAN?
SCAN: Search, Concentrate, Analyze, and Negotiate. This is something every attentive skipper does continually, and probably without thinking about it, while underway. Simply put, "scanning" is looking from side to side - and behind you - for boats, people, and objects on the water that may pose a risk of collision. Repeat whenever you’re underway.
Search the area all around your craft. This is a 360-degree examination of everything around your boat. Distances away will close or open depending on your speed or the speed of the observed boat or object. The faster you're operating, the farther out you'll need to search.
Concentrate on what you're seeing. Is it a boat? What type? What is it doing? What is its relative speed? Is it a stationary object? Drifting or anchored? Things can happen fast out there, so these are questions you must consider while you look at the various observed boats or objects.
Analyze what you're watching. Is it closing in on your position or going away from you? Remember, if the object you're observing is getting closer to you and its relative position to you is not changing, it is on a collision course. Never assume you're seen by other boat operators, who may or may not be distracted. Determine this by the way and direction they're operating. Analyze how far away the boat or object is and how fast it is closing the distance between you and it.
Negotiate. What are you going to do? Slow down, turn away from the boat or object, and head in a different direction? Remember the Navigation Rules. Learn the proper action to take while meeting head on, crossing, or overtaking another boat.
Media Contact: Susan Stocker, Boating Law Administrator and Education Coordinator, Iowa Department of Natural Resources, 515-313-6439.