Ausfisher missing in bay

[gazza2006au]

I once heard it may have been ET on a safety canpaign add "no one has ever drowned wearing a life jacket in Australia"

That is a crystal clear msg

Me personally on my boat if you're on the piss u wear a life jacket

I have 4x inflaitable jackets $260 worth is nothing compared to loosing someone or my self just wish they wouldmake pdf 150 with super thin super floatation foam im not afan of these inflaitables after seeing the thin bladder it can chafe on a hull and rub through

[gazza2006au]

And I had a member here tell me I was wrong by fitting a plb to my offshore jackets

i wear them firstly because it’s the law and secondly I’ve been swept off rocks Rock fishing before
the wife had bought me a self inflating when they first came out for around $450 and only got it the week before I went in

without that id be cut to shreds pounded against the rocks trying to get in and probably dead

I just paddled swam floated away from the rocks and someone called triple 0 and a surf rescue boat from a nearby beach dragged me in


small boat every one wears them as it’s the law
big boat on my own, kids, poor swimmers and bar crossings I make sure the self inflatings are in or you don’t come fishing with me

As far as i knowitsnot the law Steve to wear a life jacket on a boat under 4.8m you only need to wear a life jacket when boating alone, boating at night or boating in open planning waters i only came in to knit pick asyour being a dick in my thread other wise post like this just slide, where as everything i say u knit pick

We are two different people steve...

[Lovey80]

I'm with you on the life jacket Lovey - hate wearing the things ( try wearing one while swinging a sledgehammer mid summer in Onslow) and only ever put one on to cross the bar if I think it's sketchy. Hopefully it's not an attitude that will come back to haunt me. However, in the last three S&R situations, a lifejacket could well have prevented drownings / disappearances. This is what will be looked at by the powers that be. What other method besides mandatory use do you propose they put forward to​ ensure that people do the right thing and actually put life jackets on. They don't care whether we are a bit uncomfortable. They only care about the costs to the community and to be seen to be doing something to the broader public so they get re-elected. Other states in Australia have blazed the path already. Ours will follow. It will be interesting to see to what extent.

I don't propose they put forward anything. They absolutely don't need to. They already mandate lifejackets to be on board for every person. If people can't judge for themselves when wearing that jacket is necessary then the full consequences should be left to the individual. Allowing toss pots sitting in parliament to dictate how we spend our leisure time is largely how we got this nanny state to begin with. The taxes paid in all of these things we already require under current regulations should more than enough cover the "costs to the community" for the rare events that pop up. The life jacket is the difference between finding a body and finding a floating body (dead or alive). The cost to the community in that scenario is negligible when you consider the millions of trips undertaken by individuals on the water every year that go by without incident.

Where does it stop? Should we be mandating that all pro-fishermen/trawler operators wear an inflatable 24/7 on the water? What about cruise ships? We lose one person over the side of a cruise ship should all passengers on cruise ships have to wear an inflatable?

I've been working full time in risk management for the majority of the last 12 years. While I spend my life recommending and implementing mitigation measures for a raft of safety and security risks/hazards, there is always at the end of the line the ability for the powers at be to "Accept the Risk" where measures are in place to lower the risk but don't completely it remove it all together. This is one of the occasions where I think it is completely reasonable to mandate that life jackets be on board every vessel but accept the risk that some people, even when conditions get bad, will not don them and we may lose the odd person. Ruining the boating/fishing experience of almost every recreational boat user because of these tiny number of people is completely unreasonable IMO. Especially when you consider a big chunk of the hundreds of thousands of boat users fish rivers and creeks in small craft where a swamping is almost unheard of outside of Moreton Bay or maybe Hervey bay.

As for the Epirbs I'm 50/50 on that suggestion. I think we have the balance right in this regard. Places were people get swamped like Moreton Bay that aren't currently mandated by Epirbs is quite limited. They are also quite limited in size of the area. I think I good compromise would be mandating flares. By the looks of this scenario and probably most of these rare incidents that aren't covered by current legislation, you have an open boat that suddenly gets swamped. There's a good chance that epirb will not be gotten to anyway.

[Lovey80]

Not a good year for it. Free diver off Flat Rock today

Search for missing diver off North Stradbroke Island | Gold Coast Bulletin

This kind of makes my point. Diving in open waters is a far more risky enterprise than boating in semi-closed waters. Especially when you consider free diving/spear fishers. If we go down the same mindset as we are in this thread for this activity, then I can't imagine that we could even put mitigations in place to bring the risk down to that of a small craft in enclosed waters not having an epirb or not wearing a life jacket 24/7. If we start talking about "costs to the community" for this activity and reducing these risks like we are for small craft in semi/enclosed waters we quickly get to a "too hard basket" scenario where its just easier to ban the activity all together. As a diver myself I don't want us even going down this rabbit hole.

[Lovey80]

As far as i knowitsnot the law Steve to wear a life jacket on a boat under 4.8m you only need to wear a life jacket when boating alone, boating at night or boating in open planning waters i only came in to knit pick asyour being a dick in my thread other wise post like this just slide, where as everything i say u knit pick

We are two different people steve...

Gazza, in QLD it is mandatory to don jackets when crossing a bar in vessels under 4.8m. Like Scottar I don't do that every time.... rarely in fact as most of my "Bar" crossings are out of Mooloolabah where there basically is no bar and it's probably the safest "bar" in Australia. In fact I can only recall two occasions where I've actually put on a life jacket for safety reasons. 1 was in Moreton Bay with another Ausfisher when things turned nasty (trail craft full cab) and the other was in the great sandy straights when a squall came down the straights on what was 20 minutes before hand a beautiful fine day (4.3m cc).

[scottar]

I don't propose they put forward anything. They absolutely don't need to. They already mandate lifejackets to be on board for every person. If people can't judge for themselves when wearing that jacket is necessary then the full consequences should be left to the individual. Allowing toss pots sitting in parliament to dictate how we spend our leisure time is largely how we got this nanny state to begin with. The taxes paid in all of these things we already require under current regulations should more than enough cover the "costs to the community" for the rare events that pop up. The life jacket is the difference between finding a body and finding a floating body (dead or alive). The cost to the community in that scenario is negligible when you consider the millions of trips undertaken by individuals on the water every year that go by without incident.

Where does it stop? Should we be mandating that all pro-fishermen/trawler operators wear an inflatable 24/7 on the water? What about cruise ships? We lose one person over the side of a cruise ship should all passengers on cruise ships have to wear an inflatable?

I've been working full time in risk management for the majority of the last 12 years. While I spend my life recommending and implementing mitigation measures for a raft of safety and security risks/hazards, there is always at the end of the line the ability for the powers at be to "Accept the Risk" where measures are in place to lower the risk but don't completely it remove it all together. This is one of the occasions where I think it is completely reasonable to mandate that life jackets be on board every vessel but accept the risk that some people, even when conditions get bad, will not don them and we may lose the odd person. Ruining the boating/fishing experience of almost every recreational boat user because of these tiny number of people is completely unreasonable IMO. Especially when you consider a big chunk of the hundreds of thousands of boat users fish rivers and creeks in small craft where a swamping is almost unheard of outside of Moreton Bay or maybe Hervey bay.

As for the Epirbs I'm 50/50 on that suggestion. I think we have the balance right in this regard. Places were people get swamped like Moreton Bay that aren't currently mandated by Epirbs is quite limited. They are also quite limited in size of the area. I think I good compromise would be mandating flares. By the looks of this scenario and probably most of these rare incidents that aren't covered by current legislation, you have an open boat that suddenly gets swamped. There's a good chance that epirb will not be gotten to anyway.

I'm not proposing it either but if you have been around WH&S for the last decade, you of all people should realize that common sense is not something to be assumed an individual has - with either the boaty or with some of the brigade that run this hot mess called Queensland. Surely you are familiar with " I don't know anything about your job but I do know you are doing it wrong". Four maritime fatalities in as many months - and the current trend of it never being someone's fault and "the government should fix it noise" - I just expect it. Somewhere in a dark corner a committee or an election advisor will be looking at it for sure. If it wins enough votes, do you think they will care whether it makes us uncomfortable or ruins our weekend. History is full of recreational groups who have had activities curtailed through government interaction over various issues - perceived or otherwise. It won't be the first time for recreational fisherman.

If however, I was tasked to look at the most viable tools for the reduction of fatalities in small boats, mandatory life jacket use (as something other than pillows) under at least some conditions (as has already happened courtesy of incidents ) would be number one and GPS epirbs number two. Flares are already mandated for anything beyond smooth water limits for all registered vessels. If I was to be extreme about it, mandating a PLB attached to a lifejacket under solo conditions for all vessels including paddle craft would probably be on the agenda too. This is now a mandated requirement for participation in the Sydney to Hobart and Brisbane to Gladstone for all crew courtesy of their governing bodies.

Guess we will just have to "watch this space".