What to do if your boat capsizes

According to WA Police, the 5.0-metre runabout started taking on water after it was hit by a large wave about 10 kilometres west of Mandurah about 4.20pm on Saturday.

Within minutes, the boat’s occupants – a man in his 30s and two nine-year-old boys – were in the water, clinging to the boat’s bow, the only part of the boat to remain above the water.

In the video, floating in the water you can see the device that alerted rescue authorities and helped them hone in on the boat’s position – an emergency position-indicating rescue beacon, or EPIRB.

What do you do in a capsize? Things happen very quickly, so knowing exactly what to do can save lives and get everyone home safely at the end of the day.

A freak wave has swamped the boat, and its occupants appear to have been unable to prevent the boat from sinking.

According to WA Police, after the trio was in the water for about 20 minutes, a handheld VHF radio floated free from the boat, allowing the man to grab it and make an emergency call.

The call was received by Peel Water Police and Mandurah Marine Rescue.

However, it wasn’t until the EPIRB floated free of the boat that the WA Police air wing was able to pinpoint the boat’s position and guide in rescuers.

Once rescued, the trio was brought back onshore where they were treated for hypothermia and jellyfish stings.

Several things worked out well for this trio once their boat was swamped.

First, everyone in the video appears to be wearing a lifejacket. Browse through boatsales.com.au’s extensive list of rescue-related stories, and most small-boat sinkings tend to happen quickly, not slowly, so habitually wearing one whenever you’re on a boat makes sense. 

Under WA maritime laws, children aged under 10 must wear a lifejacket at all times.

It also benefitted everyone onboard that the boat had a waterproof floating marine radio that allowed the skipper to contact marine rescue services. If the radio was a fixed unit installed in the boat, saltwater immersion would have killed the battery, rendering the radio inoperable.

While the radio alerted authorities that the boat was in trouble and gave them a head-start in getting out on the water, it was the EPIRB that brought rescuers to the boat’s location.

The first thing is to always understand what your boat will do once it sinks. 

By law, trailer boats must float when they sink. However, there are two very different safety standards when it comes to how much a swamped boat floats.

The boat in this rescue situation had basic flotation, meaning that only the bow of the vessel has sufficient flotation to keep it above the water. Once the boat is submerged, it stays that way, and the only thing its occupants can do is cling to what they can, leaving themselves submerged in the water.

A better standard, and more so when young children are involved, is level flotation. In this instance, a boat will sit level in the water, meaning occupants can stay inside the hull rather than float in the water and cling to the side of it.

A boat that floats level also gives its occupants a chance to bail out the water and re-float the vessel. Staying up out of the water also helps with fatigue because your body isn’t burning energy to stay warm – although if your boat has fully inverted, it may be more energy-sapping to climb up onto the keel and hold on than it will be to stay in the water.

What’s also important is where the various safety devices are located on a boat. If yours has basic flotation, safety gear needs to be stowed forward in an easy-to-reach location so that if you need to duck below the water to retrieve it, it’s an easy task that you can do without needing to remove your lifejacket.

Be aware that safety gear in a dry bag may be difficult to retrieve if the bag is full of air.

There’s an important tip here, too, for rescuers. People who have been in the water for some time may be suffering from hypothermia, so it’s important to know what this is and how to treat it.

You may also need to be aware of other injuries, such as the jellyfish stings that affected these boaters.