This post is a continuation of Part 1 of our post on federal preemption of Ryan’s Law, a law requiring propeller guards on vessels involved in instructing children under 18 years old.
NBSAC 100 Minutes Ryan’s Law preemption excerpts
Our previous post cited several instances in the U.S. Coast Guard National Boating Safety Council (NBSAC) 100th meeting (NBSAC100) minutes in which NBSAC said Ryan’s Law is not valid due federal preemption. Federal preemption was also further described in part 1.
In part 1 we reviewed the excepts from NBSAC100 minutes in the PDF document at right.
This post will refute NBSAC’s statements that Ryan’s Law is not valid due to federal preemption.
Please note I am not a lawyer AND not a government regulator. However, the document cited will be authoritative, and crystal clear in its statements on this issue. Read More →
The Frank LomBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018 was signed by President Trump back on 4 December 2018 per Issue 92/Spring 2019 of the U.S. Coast Guard Boating Safety Circular.
The bill appropriates money for Coast Guard expenses in Fiscal Year 2019, as well as includes a few specific regulations.
The new act will modify US Code by changing 46 USC 43 to require manufacturers, distributors, or dealers of certain specific recreational boats to equip them with a kill switch (which they call an engine cut-off switch) Read More →
Executive Petty Officer Terrell Horne boarding the Halibut after water survival training USCG photo
Terrell E. Horne III, age 34 in December 2012, was aboard a RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) from the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Halibut trying to interdict a 30 foot fishing boat off souther California when the fishing boat rammed them, he fell in, and was killed by a propeller. We covered the accident back then with Terrell Horne USCG Killed by Boat Propeller While Interdicting Smugglers.
USCG named the 31st fast response cutter, a 154 footer after him, the Terrell Horne (WPC-1131) per the 20 March 2019 Modesto Bee and other references. A film of the cutter arriving at Los Angeles – Long Beach Coast Guard Base in San Pedro January 2019 is below. Read More →
Congratulations to Ott Defoe on his great Bassmaster Classic win Sunday 17 March 2019.
We screen captured the image of him and his family below as they began the parade around the arena from Bassmaster’s live coverage.
Ott Defoe & family in 2019 Bassmaster Classic after his win Bassmaster image
Congratulations to Nitro to putting their boat in the winners circle and to Mercury Marine for powering this year’s winner.
Ott Defoe in Nitro livewell for his final bag of the 2019 Bassmaster Classic, Knoxville Tennessee Bassmaster image
Thanks to all who participated in this great event, anglers, friends, family, fans, and the city of Knoxville Tennessee for providing great facilities and for turning out in record numbers (we heard 153,000 over the weekend).
Mock race between outboard motor manufacturers. Mercury posted on Instagram from the Knoxville Tennessee 2019 Bassmaster Classic
Our Log strike impact mapping / charting invention disclosure below was posted on 2 March 2019. We will make no changes to the text below the line following this paragraph except to correct misspellings, punctuation, and to update html/computer codes and links. Any updates to the invention will be posted below the invention disclosure.
Log Strike Impact Mapping /Charting Invention
Definitions
Log Strike – use of the phrase “log strike” in this invention refers to a marine drive (outboard motor, stern drive, inboard, though hull drive / pod drive, of other marine drive) striking anything while going in a forward direction. Objects struck could include logs, rocks, driftwood, dredge pipes, reefs, concrete, floating debris, submerged objects, stumps, etc. Japanese marine drive manufacturers tend to refer to these impacts as driftwood strikes.
Quick Description of This Invention
This invention proposes using technologies similar to those already patented by Suzuki and Brunswick to record log strikes, share that data anonymously, then create crowd sourced maps/ charts of the aggregated impacts. These crowd sourced maps could be printed paper maps as well as displayed on onboard navigational displays or other electronic devices. Read More →
Brunswick / Mercury Marine was issued U.S. Patent 10,214,271 Systems and Methods for Monitoring Underwater Impacts to Marine Propulsion Devices on 26 February 2019. Steven J. Gonring and Mark D. Curtis are listed as the inventors.
The patent teaches detecting rate of trim (rate of tilt) to determine an impact occurred. If the drive is tilting more rapidly than normal, it may have struck something. Brunswick talks about alerting the operator, turning the drive off during severe impacts, estimating the force of impact from changes in the rate of trim, storing the resulting data, and evaluating the remaining useful life of the drive or signaling the outboard should be serviced. This system is designed to report impacts above a given level. It does not address impacts that break the outboard off the boat, except to suggest that several impacts above a given level could make an outboard more likely to fail in future impacts.
Near the bottom of this post we identify a Suzuki patent in Japan that may create some prior art issues for Brunswick’s / Mercury Marine’s recent patent.
In our continuing coverage of large outboard motors breaking off and flipping into boats it is obvious that most incidents in recent years involve bass boats.
Some reasons are obvious: bass boats run fast, bass anglers are in a hurry in bass tournaments, and bass hang out in shallow water. However this paper digs much deeper into the issues.
It suggests the convergence of the bass tournament industry, the conditions present in bass tournaments, and boat & outboard motor manufacturers that created modern bass tournaments had the unintended consequence of bringing together conditions necessary for large outboard motors to strike submerged objects, break off, and flip into boats.
Note: this paper is about 5 MB in size and best viewed on a tablet or desktop computer.
click icon above to view latest pdf version of paper Note paper is about 5 MB in size
Trauma Monthly published a great paper in July 2017 in which eight European medical professionals in The Netherlands wrote in detail about four specific boat propeller accidents.
The authors provide medical histories of the four individuals injured including color photos of their injuries, how they were treated by paramedics, what happened initially at the hospital, follow up operations, rehabilitation, psychiatric work with them, and numerical evaluations of the percent of recovery they were eventually able to achieve in terms of pain, other symptoms, function in daily living, function in sport/recreation, and quality of life related to their specific injured joints.
In addition, the authors constructed a summary of similar case studies from approximately 20 separate journal articles. The summary includes counts by author on the number of individuals, number of individuals by sex, mean age, activity during which injury occurred (waterskiing, swimming/diving, other), and the number of individuals that fell off and were ran over.
We strongly recommend this article as a good place for medical professionals to start a study of this field, in part because of the extensive bibliography provided. While we did already have all the pure propeller injury studies they cite on our Propeller Safety Bibliography, it will be useful to medical professionals to have these studies on a more manageable list. With no pure propeller studies on their list that were not already listed in our Propeller Safety Bibliography, we suspect they used it to identify at some of these studies. We are always glad to assist such works.
Thanks to the authors and the several facilities involved in putting all this together.
15 June 2022 Update – an overview and bibliography of medical articles on treating watercraft wounds, including water borne marine infections:
8 August 2019 Update – if you have a boat propeller foot or ankle injury or challenges with all the accompanying infections you may find this article helpful as well:
Motorboat propeller-related head injuries: A systematic
literature review with a case illustration. Scalia, Silven, Costanzo, Ponzo, Florio, Pettinato, Terranova, Iacopino, Umana, and Nicoletti. Surgery Neurology International. Scientific Scholar. Published 19 May 2023.
A medical review of medical propeller strike articles with an emphasis on head strikes. Includes details on one particular head strike.
A brief review of the major propeller safety events in 2018 including safety meetings, accidents, legal cases, deaths of those involved in the movement, statistics, patents, articles published, public service announcements, anniversaries, regulations, and other related events. Read More →
Back in June 2018 Suffolk County, New York voted to require propeller guards on boats used for youth instruction. The law was named for 12 year-old Ryan Weiss, killed by a boat propeller at Long Island’s Centerport Yacht Club in July 2017. Ryan was killed during a training exercise on righting a capsized sailboat.
Centerport Yacht Club RIB involved in the accident
Now, in January 2019, with the boating season a few months off Ryan’s family (Kellie & Kevin Weiss) have teamed with newly elected New York State Senator, Jim Gaughran, to introduce a similar bill statewide.
The Weiss family hopes the bill can be passed before this year’s boating season gets underway per WABC-TV ABC channel 7.
The Weiss family and Senator Gaughran speak on Ryan and Ryan’s Law in the WLNY CBS New York video below.
