Boating Safety Day 2014

Boating Safety Day is a free community event for the whole family across NSW this Sunday (September 28) between 10am and 2pm. You can enjoy a range of marine activities and learn about safe and responsible boating.

Hosted by Roads and Maritime Services, this year’s Boating Safety Day events will be located at:

Activities on offer include:

Make sure you stop in at the Roads and Maritime stand where Boating Education Officers and Boating Safety Officers will be on hand to provide important lifejacket information, advice on safe boating practices and information on boat licences, registrations and NSW boating regulations. 

Don’t forget to enter the Safe Boating Competition for your chance to win a family pack of lifejackets or a VHF marine radio.

 Some of the key stats are:

<< NSW’s had its best boating safety result for more than 20 years, with fatalities on the water significantly down.

<< For the 12 months ending 30 June this year, eight fatalities were recorded statewide, when compared with last year’s 27.

<< Fatalities were also down 35 per cent on the long-term boating season average and the number of recreational vessel incidents continues its downward trend with the fewest number of incidents recorded over more than a decade.

<< The NSW Government has been committed to promoting the wearing of lifejackets. The lifejacket program “Old4New” physically took lifejackets to boating ramps and swapped old jackets for the new less bulky variety.

<< The program is based on long-term studies that reveal nine out of 10 people who drown when boating were not wearing a lifejacket.

<< Since the life lifejacket program started, wear rates are better than 30 per cent statewide. To put that in context, that figure is more than three times higher than the previous figure of nine per cent published by the National Marine Safety Committee in 2007.