6. Safety on the Water

Some Pointers

The section of the previous chapter on outboards contains fifteen safety precautions of particular importance to the row-boat fisherman. But the list doesn't stop there. There are other dangers to guard against.

1. Never board or leave a boat with your fishing lines already rigged up. Dangling hooks can do a lot of damage. Attach and detach hooks only while aboard the craft.
   
   
2. Carry along a pair of cutting pliers. If you have to ex­tract a hook from someone's flesh, don't try to pull it back the way it entered. The barb won't let you. Push the point of the hook on through until the barb is fully exposed and you reach the shank. Then cut the hook.
   
   
3. Alcohol and salt water don't mix. A fishing boat is no place for a drunk or for drinking. If you see anybody toting bottles aboard a party boat, you don't have to be a tattler. Just gather up your family and head for a different boat.
   
   
4. Watch out for swimmers, skin divers and driftwood. You can harm the first two. The third can harm you.
   
   
5. Learn some form of artificial respiration. Oral is the easiest to administer.
   
   
6. Don't kick up  a wake and risk damaging property ashore, a moored boat, or capsizing somebody's craft.
   
   
7. You may be a cowboy behind the wheel of an auto and get away with it but don't try hot-rodding in a boat. The road can't come up and hit you—the water can!

Seasickness

If you or anyone in your family is seasick-prone here are some things to do and not to do.

1. Get a bottle of seasick pills at the drugstore and take exactly as directed.


2. Don't breakfast on orange juice, eggs, bacon and coffee, even though that is the ail-American breakfast.
   
   
3. Eat no breakfast at all or, if you think you have to eat in the morning, make dry toast and grapefruit do.
   
   
4. Stay away from sweets, greasy and fried foods.
   
   
5. Take along a light sandwich, peanut butter is good, and a jug of chicken broth for lunch. If that isn't enough, fresh peaches or apples or pears won't hurt you.
   
   
6. Don't drink coffee. Your best bet is ginger ale.
   
   
7. Chew gum if you get hungry.
   
   
8. Face the bow and breathe deeply if you start to feel woozy while aboard. The wind and spray can work wonders.
   
   
9. If you can't lick a seasick attack stretch out flat and relax. You'll live but you'll miss the fun.

Rescue Breathing

We hope there'll never be a time when you'll have to use the knowledge, but anyone who goes near the water should know how to apply some form of artificial respiration. Oral resuscitation, or rescue breathing, is the simplest method yet devised.

1. Lie the patient on his back, with his shoulders and neck raised enough to have his chin pointing straight up.
   
   
2. To accomplish that, push his chin back with one hand and his head forward with the other, as illustrated. If any ­thing soft is available, a rolled-up pad under his shoulders will help.
   
   
3. Take a deep breath, open your mouth as wide as pos­ sible and place it over the patient's mouth and nostrils. Be sure to spread your mouth over the entire shaded area shown under D in Figure 20.
   
   
4. Blow into the patient's mouth until you feel resistance of his expanding lungs and see his chest rise.
   
   
5. Remove your mouth and let the patient exhale passively.
   
   
6. Take another deep breath, as in Step Three, while the patient exhales.
   
   
7. Repeat Steps Four and Five about twenty times a minute if the patient is a child, about twelve times a minute if an adult.
   
   
8. The amount of air you blow into the patient's mouth is determined by his size, by watching his chest rise and fall and by the resistance of his expanding lungs. An infant may need only a puff.

Figure 20

9. If the patient's airway is obstructed and if he is a small child, hang him upside down and slap him firmly between the shoulder blades.


10. If the patient is too big to lift, roll him on his side in a head-down position and probe as deeply into his mouth and throat as possible with your fingers to find and remove the obstruction.

Learn these procedures well and, please, please, never have to use them.

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