No surprize - running a small boat offshore can be hazardous. But three things - advancements in electronics, more reliable outboard motors, and the advent of of marine towing services - have made the risks more acceptable. Add in a heavy dose of caution, common sense, and time on the water, and you're about as well prepared as you can hope to be...

Is keeping 1/3 of your fuel for bad weather being too conservative? Perhaps...but consider that that if you have to run at just below planing speed, your fuel mileage may drop to half or less than your optimum. In Toy Boat 2, minimum planing speed fully loaded is around 15 mph. If the weather and water conditions are such that we have to run 12 - 14 MPH, we've seen mileage as low as 1.2 MPG on our old carbureted 2-stroke, instead of its normal 2.9 - 3.0 MPG . 

Because skiffs usually don't have a lot of fuel capacity, fuel management can be critical. That's why we installed a fuel flow meter on Toy Boat 2. Dashboard fuel gauges on boats are notoriously unreliable. On Toy Boat 2, the dashboard gauge does not move from "Full" until the tank is at least 3/8, almost 1/2 empty! The Standard Horizon FF41 provides a much more accurate gauge of fuel consumption.

Toy Boat 2 has a 45 gallon tank, all of which is usable (we've actually run the tank dry before). With our new E-TEC, if we cruise at 21 MPH at 4.5 MPG, we should be able to get 63 miles offshore in 3 hours, using 14 gallons of gas Using the 1/3 - 1/3 -1/3 rule, this means we would need 42 gallons of gas. So we should have adequate fuel capacity for our "worse case" trip with just the main tank.

With our old 2-stroke motor, we averaged 2.9 MPG, so our 45 gallon tank was not adequate. We usually carried three 6 gallon tanks in reserve, which brought our capacity to 63 gallons. Since gas weighs roughly 6.25 lbs per gallon, those 18 extra gallons added about 111.5 lbs to the boat. Now we don't need them. Note: if you must carry extra gas, look into a collapsible gas tank, such as the ATL flex bladders. While pricey, they can be flattened when empty, taking up a lot less space.

You also need to make sure that the rest of your boat is operationally sound. Losing your steering, lights, bilge pump, etc. offshore are all bad situations. Go over all aspects of your safety gear before you leave. This includes things like:

• Critical wiring (lights, bilge pump)
• Bilge pump operation
• Communications equipment
• EPIRB

Courtesy Bombardier Rec. Products

Courtesy Bombardier Rec. Products

With the advent of more reliable outboards, better communications tools, and the arrival of offshore towing services, that picture has changed. When we spoke to two different motor dealers, both of whom were avid offshore fishermen, about a kicker motor, their response was "don't bother with a kicker motor, unless you want to slow troll with it". Their logic was:

• New outboards rarely fail nowadays
  
  
• If you have twin motors correctly propped, you will probably not be able to plane the boat on one motor without changing the prop. This can be very difficult to do safely at sea, especially in rough water and bad weather.
  
  
• If you have a small kicker motor, you will only be able to make 3 - 8 MPH headway with it in calm seas and good weather. You may not be able to make any headway at all in high winds and big swells. In addition, unless a kicker motor is used regularily, it can become very unreliable.

Given these conditions, they felt the $2,000+ for a kicker motor could be more wisely used to:

• Buy the best VHF radio and antenna possible
  
  
• Buy a good sea anchor
  
  
• Buy an Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB)
  
  
• Subscribe to a towing service that will go offshore. In Southern California, both Vessel Assist and Sea Tow offer such services,and
  
  
• Buy a satellite phone, if there's money left over

If you encounter an unrecoverable problem with the motor, you would throw out the sea anchor to stabilize the boat's attitude and slow drifting, then call on the radio or sat phone for help. As a last resort, the EPIRB could be activated.

That argument made a lot of sense to us. We're still working on the satellite phone, but the other pieces are in place on Toy Boat 2. We have an electric trolling motor that we use for position control and slow trolling, but it's not there for safety reasons.

• Fouled plugs are rare with 4-strokes and new DFI 2-strokes
  
  
• If you damage a prop in heavy seas, it will be difficult-to-impossible to safely change the prop from inside the boat
  
  
• You are not going to be able to service major components that fail at sea

So what can you do? After scratching our heads for a while, it seems like the most likely things that we could address would be:

• Blown fuses (carry extra fuses and possibly a fuse puller)
  
  
• Dead batteries (have a second battery and/or pull starter)
  
  
• Clogged fuel lines/filters (spare filters and fuel bulb, small hose clamps, filter wrench)
  
  
• Low oil (carry extra oil, plus an oil filter if you have a 4-stroke engine)
  
  
• Clogged water pump (might be able to dislodge something stuck lose to the exhaust port)
  
  
• Replace nuts or bolts that have vibrated loose (extra nuts and bolts, plus matching wrenches)
  
  
• Engine stuck in an undesirable tilt position (a large screwdriver to manually release the trim-and-tilt)
  
  
• A hose that comes loose (hose clamps)
  
  
• A through-hull that comes loose (fids)

So that's how we've stocked our toolbox.Of course, we still carry a spare prop (in this case, a Piranha composite with blades removed), two spare prop nuts and thrust washers and cotter pins, "just in case" (old habits die hard).

Being able to deal with short period swells, high winds, and large quartering following seas are all essential skills, as is some knowledge of interpreting weather signs. These are all skills that any offshore boater needs, but become super-critical for skiff owners.

This raises the question of how best to travel at night.There have been a number of internet discussion threads about the topic, and at least one article in a major publication. To summarize:

• Slow down & have everyone maintain a constant watch.
  
  
• Know your navigation lights, especially the configurations for vessels under tow, fishing vessels, and submarines.
  
  
• Radar is nice if you have it. Some people felt it was a necessity, others did not. If you don't have radar, a radar reflector is a good idea for foggy days or at night.
  
  
• All hands must be prepared for a man-overboard situation (see our section "Man Overboard").