By Owen Boss
Staff Writer
NORTHAMPTON - Area boaters heading out on the Connecticut River this summer can expect surprise boardings by members of the U.S. Coast Guard, who will be regularly patrolling the often-crowded waterway and issuing tickets to boaters who fail to have the required safety equipment onboard.
Commander Tom Morkan, chief of response for the Coast Guard's Boston sector, said his office is stepping up enforcement in response to an article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette last August that analyzed lawlessness on the river and the local Coast Guard Auxiliary's struggle to enforce safety regulations.
"We wanted to make sure we made our presence known on the river early on this season," Morkan said. "The problem is that auxiliary members don't have any enforcement capacity. They can report infractions, do voluntary checks at the boat dock and tell you what the requirements are, but they can't issue citations."
The risk of an accident or emergency on the Pioneer Valley waterway, Morkan said, increases dramatically in the summer as more and more inexperienced operators head out to beat the heat.
Massachusetts and Maine are the only states in New England, and two of six in the nation, that do not require operators to complete a boating safety course before hitting the water. In all other states, to legally operate a boat, residents must complete an eight-hour training program in which they learn the basics of boating safety.
In Massachusetts, any resident over the age of 18, regardless of boating experience, can rent a vessel and launch into the Connecticut, as long as they can provide a valid driver's license.
Seasoned operators like Fran Edwards, of Granby, who has had his boat docked locally since 1971, said increased Coast Guard enforcement on the river is the first step to making the waterway safer.
"The main problem is that the majority of the people out there just don't know what they're doing," Edwards said. "It should be mandatory, like it is in Connecticut, that before you operate a boat you have to take a safety course. You get people out there driving their first boat and they have no clue what to do with it."
Edwards said over the last couple of years he has noticed inexperienced boaters taking advantage of the fact that rules on the river have gone unenforced for so long.
"They've noticed that there is no one out there to stop them," Edwards said. "The auxiliary guys can't even scold them."
Also patrolling the river are members of the state Environmental Police, but recent budget cuts and a regional consolidation have made it harder than ever to perform the department's duties, which include enforcing hunting and fishing regulations, monitoring the traffic of boats and off-road vehicles, patrolling state parks and conducting search-and-rescue operations.
According to Catherine Williams, spokesperson for the Environmental Police, the department's coverage area used to be divided into three regions. Several years ago, the state consolidated two of those regions into one, and now 11 officers must cover an area from Orange to Williamstown, south to Pittsfield and back east to the western edge of the Quabbin Reservoir in Belchertown.
Surprise boardings
As a U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat coasted into the local boat launch on Route 5 in Northampton last weekend, those waiting for their chance to back their boats into the water began exchanging worried glances and asking each other why the Coast Guard would be out on the river.
Some even began giving up their spots in line because their safety equipment wasn't in compliance.
Dressed in official Coast Guard uniforms, Chief David Luczek, of Coast Guard East 7 in Boston, Petty Officer Thomas Cirelli and Seaman Matthew Deglau stepped off their boat and onto the dock, clipboards in hand, to begin a surprise safety inspection of the next boat into the water.
"We're just trying to make ourselves clearly visible out here and for the most part we have been giving out verbal warnings because people aren't used to seeing us on the river," Luczek said. "Later on in the summer, as time passes, we will become more active in regard to writing tickets. For now it's about letting people know that they have to have the necessary safety equipment onboard or they could be fined."
Cirelli and Deglau opened compartments, checked the expiration dates on flares, counted life jackets, checked lights and horns and made sure the boater had a throwable life preserver onboard.
"If the flare they have onboard expired in May of this year, we're not going to tell them that they have to go back to the dock and pull their boat out of the water; that's not the idea here," Morkan said. "We will let them know they are expired and tell them to go out and get another set of flares before they head back out."
Morkan said in a two-day span last weekend, Coast Guard representatives performed 30 boat inspections, issued a handful of tickets for improper safety equipment and stopped about 100 other boaters to fill them in on the state's boating safety guidelines.
Education goal
"We were doing a lot of education rather than ticketing people," Morkan said. "We were looking to see if boats had the necessary lights, life jackets and that their horns were working. Those are the things that people overlook because their intention is to be home by sunset, and they never think an emergency is going to happen."
One rule Morkan said the Coast Guard will be aggressively enforcing is the proper number and size of life jackets onboard compared to the number of adult and child passengers. Often, Morkan said, an operator will make sure to have a life jacket for each passenger but pointed out that "an adult life jacket with a chest size of 40 isn't going to save a child in the case of an emergency."
"We want people to know that during an emergency on the water is the wrong time to start thinking about how many life preservers you have onboard," Morkan said.
Although they are committed to having regular patrols on the Connecticut throughout the summer season, Morkan said state Coast Guard ranks have been stretched thin, as its members are sent to aid cleanup efforts with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
A possible solution, Morkan said, is to send available Coast Guard members to the Connecticut on the weekends. Once in the region, that personnel would link up with Environmental Police boats. "Most Mass E.P. units are boats with single operators, so we thought sending a couple of our people to Northampton to have them travel the river with the Environmental Police might be a smarter way of going about it," Morkan said.
Despite some initial confusion among boaters, Morkan said the units that went out last weekend reported getting a positive response from those they stopped.
"We gathered later on in the week and hands down, everyone from the Coast Guard said it was a success," Morkan said. "After we educated boaters to what our mission is and let them know that we have jurisdiction because of interstate commerce, we got a really positive feeling from the boating public on the river."
Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com
