The U.S. Coast Guard is the government agency that grants
approval for equipment of all types so they may be legally used
to meet equipment carriage requirements aboard U.S. commercial
and pleasure vessels. This includes all of the safety equipment
that we are accustomed to seeing onboard, including fire
extinguishers, lifejackets, survival suits, flares, life rings,
strobe lights, and a host of other items.
To become Coast Guard approved, a product's design is
evaluated and its performance tested against Coast
Guard-established minimum requirements to ensure its
reliability and effectiveness for its intended purpose. The
process for gaining approval is generally quite long and
difficult, which appears to be a good way to approach
"endorsing" equipment that can save lives.
If you go out fishing in your Boston Whaler on a nice summer
afternoon, you know that if tragedy should strike, the Coast
Guard-approved lifejackets you purchased at West Marine will do
what they are designed to do. That's because the lifejackets
were thoroughly tested and evaluated by dedicated and
knowledgeable Coast Guard inspectors and engineers who always
put the public's safety first. Coasties would never allow a
defective product on the market where it could cost people
their lives. You sure wouldn't want to find out the hard way
that, despite the claims of the manufacturer, the lifejacket
wasn't really up to the task of keeping junior's head out of
the water after all. And scores of merchant seamen are alive
today thanks to survival suits that performed exactly as
advertised when the boat went down, when the only hope was that
the EPIRB worked and they could hang on long enough in freezing
water until a rescue helicopter arrived and lowered the basket
down.
A diligent and skeptical crew of Coasties watching over the
manufacturers is something we should all be thankful for. For
the most part, this system has served both commercial and
recreational mariners reasonably well. But there is another
side to the approval process that needs to be told, and that
will be the subject of next month's column.