Featured Stories on Boating and Boater Safety

Paralympic dream drives ex-yacht captain

Jody Hill’s dream is to sail for the United States as a Paralympian.

Rowing for their lives in a 9-foot dinghy

Lady Rosalie - a 41-foot Hatteras - had more than 2 inches of glass at the keel, but she was no match for the semisubmerged object she struck en route to Bimini.

Mike Ayres knew as soon as he started to row that it was a race against time, one he might well lose unless he just kept rowing. And so he did.

Ayres, 46, rowed across the Straits of Florida through 15-foot seas for roughly 48 hours while first mate Dillon Moore, 19, bailed in a desperate attempt to keep their 9-foot dinghy from sinking or drifting into the Atlantic on the Gulf Stream in a strengthening south wind. “I figured, boy, I better raise the bar and not stop rowing until we’re either dead or we’re safe,” says Ayres, a snowbird from Onondaga, Mich., who lives aboard in the Florida Keys during the winter.

An 18-foot great white sizes up a 21-foot boat

John Watson thought the great white shark was two sunfish when it first surfaced.

John Watson was raising his center console’s anchor when he saw two fins emerge from the placid water.

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Will LightSquared mean lights out for GPS?

LightSquared's broadband network threatens to disrupt GPS navigation at sea, on land and in the air. As a rule of thumb, marine electronics manufacturers assume that nearly every boat on the water carries GPS in one form or another, and that effectively gives boaters membership in a larger group called the “GPS community.” The group found its voice for the first time this year in the face of a common enemy.

Backed by a hedge-fund billionaire, a company called LightSquared wants to build a 4G broadband communications network, and the Federal Communications Commission has given its initial approval. GPS manufacturers and users are horrified, believing that LightSquared’s plan would disrupt navigation on land and sea and in the air.

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Often in danger, charting a path to Union's victory

During the Civil War, Coast Survey field staff scouted, mapped, cleared sunken ships from channels and placed navigation aids to help Union forces.

Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey has dug into its archives and found a trove of wartime cartography and accounts of topographers and hydrographers dispatched to the front lines to work as surveyors, boat pilots, and chart- and mapmakers for the Union cause.

Deployed in combat intelligence or combat engineering roles, Coast Survey field staff would scout, map, chart, pilot, clear sunken ships from channels and install navigation aids for Union forces, often while dodging bullets and artillery rounds.

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