New Year’s Resolution Ideas for Boaters

The year is ending and picking a New Year’s resolution will set the tone for your next year. Thankfully, for boaters, bettering your responsible boating practices makes for a great resolution. Now that everyone has an HD camera in their pocket, we’ve all seen videos of people irresponsibly causing chaos out on the water. Don’t be those people. Brush up on your skills and knowledge. Here are four New Year’s resolutions you can easily adopt in order to make your time out there the best it can be.

1.      Sharpening Your Boating Skills

No matter how long you have been on the waters, you always have something new to learn about responsible boating practices in your areas like navigation and safety. If you are a newbie, this has to be at the top of your list. If you are seasoned, then be aware of any changes in sandbars, channels, or other aspects that storms may have caused to change over the past year.

2.      Reduce Your Plastic Use

Keeping the water clean is about more than species protection. While trash and plastic in our waters do cause a grave danger to aquatic life, seeing polluted waters is also just sad and can put a damper on the day. As boaters, what we love most about the water–fishing, sports, exploring, etc–is all best enjoyed in clean water. Deciding to reduce your use of plastic cups, bottles, cutlery, and plates, among others, is a good way to ensure that you’re contributing less to the garbage that ends up in our oceans. 

3.      Get More Accessories

This is an easy one. What kind of boater isn’t constantly on the lookout for new ways to maximize fun on the water? Need to get some new fishing gear? New speakers? A solar panel? Go for it. A popular new year’s resolution can be to try out a new hobby, so buy that snorkel mask, wakeboard, or cast-net. Some may go all the way to getting a new boat entirely. Life is too short not to be out enjoying the water when you get the chance.

4.      Improve Your Safety

You can never go wrong by improving the safety of your vessel in the new year. As much as we love going out in the water, it can get dangerous at times, and a sure way to turn an unfortunate event into an absolute disaster is to be unprepared. So, take all possible measures to help reduce the risk of any undesirable event. These include:

• Registering an Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) so search-and-rescue teams may find you easily if you get lost or have a system malfunction.
• Re-upping on emergency flares.
• Checking the quality of your life jackets.
• Do an audit of the boat’s electronics.

This is all well and good, but the thing about new year’s resolutions is that few people follow them. By few people, we mean just 9%. Don’t just take time to research the best resolutions for your boat and then abandon them when the rubber meets the road. 

AccuDock cares about your boating experience. If one of your New Year’s Resolutions is to install or upgrade your dock, then reach out to us!