HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL INSTRUCTOR

What Makes a Good Instructor?

To be a successful Rescue Water Craft instructor first means that we need Rescue Water Craft experience. We have to learn from our previous mistakes we made, have field experience and we need to be trained by a competent leader.

But before we get on with that, what exactly is a Rescue Water Craft instructor?

An Instructor is a student, leader and a mentor. They have gone through a selection process and have been evaluated to possess the required knowledge base and use the supplies needed to host a competency training course.

They are able to prepare for a course, scrutinize themselves and their student cadre and to maintain the course records. They must have a thorough working and maintenance capability of all tools and equipment.

They have a safety plan and are prepared for emergencies. Most importantly they know when to say no in the field and stop forward motion to prevent an injury or accident. They do this by paying attention to the work flow, water and weather conditions, other instructors and the direction of the energy in the course.

They know when they have made a mistake, admit it and make the necessary amendments.

MANY INSTRUCTORS ARE TEACHING BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE GOOD

A certificate of professional development does not ensure that holder of that document is an instructor. What decides that is the outcome, how the students respond, retain knowledge and perform, and what their future will become.

I would encourage instructors to take four classes a year, or critical assessments of their training presentations. That would cover the four seasons in a calendar year, keeping the skill and mind honed.

Have a good mentor. Ask to be in their audience.

If they give you permission, listen to them.

Give credit to your mentors. You are not special! You did not gain this knowledge on your own, you are a steward of it. Someday you may pay it forward.

Give thanks to what they invested in you, be grateful and humble. Humility is the first way to crush an edgy ego. But most importantly protect the seamanship skills that have been entrusted to you. Those go back to our ancestral times!

WILINGNESS TO LISTEN AND LEARN

We expect if from our students but we must first demand it from our instructor cadre.

‱ Know your training materials! This is the key to what your students are paying you to be in your audience.
‱ Seek peer review of presentations, documents or skills produced.
‱ Stay current with changes in the boating rescue world.

Be enthusiastic and learned about every aspect of Rescue Water Craft operations. Your position is one of authority and your coverage means you need to be ready to assist your students in succeeding.

You must be able to multi-task under pressure and still smile and enjoy the demands. You need to be good at logistics, reading the water and weather and keeping to a timed format. You are a water rescue counselor.

Do not assume everyone understand your descriptions. Define everything in terms that can help defend actions even under investigation.

Our Rescue Water Craft client lineage is based on the rotation of agency personnel, that is an average of 3 to 7 years of rollover. This means their knowledge base will be lost to the next generation and has to be fulfilled with new Coxswains. That is change and time and a significant investment for clients.

This also translates in to the Gold Standard of K38. We are on top of the training wheel because we are the most current at the helm.

Boating rules, laws and regulations are constantly being updated or changed. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is finally beginning a new trend of modernization, we have to stay in step with that. The Rescue Water Craft boat is changing EVERY SINGLE YEAR!

You need resources to lean on. Being in the digital age we tend to use the search engines for research.

However, you need hard copy books to have a readily accessible source library. For my research and knowledge base I often go to thrifts stores or search online books stores for old maritime books.

Be firm in your safety convictions and respect the role you fulfill. A strong training course is filled by a group of students who are engaged and asking questions, participating and deeply interested.

You are in a position of a sacred trust. People are depending upon your knowledge base. Their very lives rely upon it and so do the survivors they will be working on behalf in a perilous time.

Your interaction is about reputation; yours and theirs!

You students and mentors are a measure of success. Be sincerely grateful that they believe in you enough to place their valuable time, effort or invest in your capabilities.

Remember, it’s not all about you. Instructing is a sacred trust, its about what your students will do next.

__________________

Posted: September 1, 2019

Content Creator of Rescue Water Craft and Personal Water Craft boating international education standards: Shawn Alladio is the world’s foremost authority and leading subject matter expert. She cares most about her community and the culture surrounding the safety of event service providers and Rescue Water Craft operators, working hard and dedicated towards protecting their reputation, distributing safety information and continuing to train these amazing individuals to the highest standards of care.

__________

Have any questions? Join the Rescue Water Craft Association
and discover what your community is doing to modernize standards, safety and reduce liability!
Join the Rescue Water Craft Association

Use at your own risk. Please take a qualified Rescue Water Craft training course and maintain proper records and respect all the PWC, RWC, PPE, and gear OEM manufacturer warning labels and cautions.

TSE TSO

DECISION

TSE TSO

As Rescue Water Craft Coxswains, leaders or instructors, our goal is not to cause harm.

This means our training program needs to be inspected, reviewed and careful consideration and care used to implement the best practices. PROGRAM EVALUATION

We need to set success through the measure of producing competency and program security along with training accordingly. And we need to enforce that like mad!

What is always relative? History is relative. We tend not to learn from history until it becomes our own.

So how do we incorporate the lessons they learned? We must study and we must listen!

Let us go back in time.

It is 1934. Tyrolean climbers Aschenbrenner and Schneider make an attempt summit at Nanga Parbat in the Himalayans.

This mountain is the 9th highest on Earth.

Six Sherpas lost their lives and their names do not stand out in history.

Ego and National pride carry as high a price as that we find in the Rescue Water Craft community. Be proud of accomplishments, but first be prepared to ensure their success.

Tse Tso is a saying ‘Long Life’ and Pasang Picture Sherpa saved his life through the determination of this mindset during a snowstorm. He was at high altitude when abandoned by his employers to fend for himself with 2 of his fellow Porters.

This action meant certain death on the mountain. He had a choice to make. Give up and surrender to fate or to take action. The problem he faced was he was not taught to lead and was not equipped to do so.

He decided at that moment to take the lead and endure into the unknown.

Let us not forget the hard lessons of all pioneers, survivors and the dead.

This is where ‘lessons learned’ comes into play and how we often ignored the warning signs. We could extract thousands of these incidents that any of us could determine our best route forward.

DO NOT DUPLICATE

The need for support staff was critical to success in mountaineering at this level. How we as humans treated one another then was reciprocal for the history of those times.

However, for us in 2019 we can revisit and learn from this tragedy. A significant cultural detraction was the ‘Sahibs’ did not train their ‘Porters’ to be climbers. They did not outfit them with appropriate climbing gear or enough caloric intake.

There was a disconnect between the two groups and the porters (Sherpas) suffered greatly for this.

Aschenbrenne and Schneider abandoned 3 Sherpas on a descent leaving them and speeding off on skis. Pasang Picture realized he would have to take the lead to bring down Nima Dorje and Pinzo Norbu to basecamp IV.

This was not exclusive to the German group in the formative years of climbing the Himalayas; many nations have gone to the Himalayans not respecting the capabilities of the Sherpas as climbers but simple carriers of equipment for logistical support. Budget with many events has placed safety in the back row for decades.

What is the parallel for today?

Do not think that your mechanic is not important to your RWC program. They are on that boat with you! If you are not able to tell effectively your mechanic what the problems are how can they make an efficient assessment and repair?

In 2019 for climbing change is championed from Nepalese climber Nirmal Purja, and partners Mingma David Sherpa and Gesman Tamang summited Everest of Project Possible:

PROJECT POSSIBLE

Sherpas have climbed the Himalayas more than any other group in the world, but have lain mainly in the shadows of mountaineering history. Project Possible broke that barrier and shattered it.

Change is a struggle. We are not our great grandparents and we do not live in those times. We are in a time of great prosperity and reduction of poverty worldwide. We have opportunity and luxury. Anyone can be great if they put their mind to it and follow suit.

We have opportunity, ability to travel, and the incredible asset of using the internet to learn faster, unite with new Rescue Water Craft partners, use translation services to communicate and share content and inspiration.

We are witness to the rapid increase of a unique small power craft that I set out to revolutionize training worldwide. I did not know this alone. Thousands of people are the impetus of this success. The internet is making that happen for all of us. The obscurity of anonymity has passed.

I myself believe I am a guide for others as a Subject Matter Expert in the Personal Water Craft community. I am the voice for those who are behind the scenes, in our past history and guiding you to take the lead now and in the future.

I could have all the answers in the room, but if a water rescue mob doesn’t want that, we could revert back to a tragedy like the one in 1934 or any known Rescue Water Craft fatality.

Why is this? Not listening to the lessons learned of our forefathers and foremothers who pioneered the RWC capacity and averted disaster. We are still alive, striving for Tse Tso, nobody dies.

ONE IS NONE

In the early years of the 1970’s to the 80’s the Personal Water Craft water safety crew coined a few terms I will share with you:

1. A Moment for Safety will Save a Lifetime of Regret – ‘Brian Bendix’
2. Nobody Dies – USJSBA/IJSBA Course Marshals – ‘Brad Southworth, Ronny Kling, Steve Strickland, Willy’

These men paid attention and were not concerned about safety, they planned for it with strategy. They had much less then you do today for assets. You may not have been born in 1974, so learn to respect those who handed the baton into your lane.

The 1934 expedition is where Ang Tsering Sherpa and Pasang Painter Sherpa became mountaineers and were no longer just Porters. They became lifesavers.

Ask yourself this: How would you manage the death of your Crew while you were navigating on the water? What would you do next?

The names of the dead Sherpas are not mentioned in history like the leads and nations who funded those climbs.

The Germans did not share the details of what happened those 7 days of survival on the mountain. The Sherpa voices were private and reserved, their version reserved in the faded distance.

Many climbers died from decisions that were made before they stepped foot on the mountain. The same parallel happens in the Rescue Water Craft community. Some of this was economic, poor planning, bad weather or an incomplete team.

Likewise, Coxswains and Crew have died because their training was not secure for safety. How would you value their sacrifice?

The storm they encountered on Nanga Parbat that began on July 7, 1934 at the Silver Saddle shares with us valuable lessons of leadership, organization, training and what training produces; safety.

The vetting system of a Rescue Water Craft team is critical. The knowledge base and equipment must be reliant and the equipment ready for the field.

Many Rescue Water Craft programs have insufficient equipment and are ill prepared to succeed in 2019. Even though we began our Rescue Water Craft outreach in 1974 in the USA.

I have witnessed Rescue Water Craft programs where the Crew Members are treated as a second-class citizen. Sometimes they are referred to as ‘rescue swimmers’ but in our maritime culture they are Crew members. This is dangerous.

Why is it dangerous you may wonder? If a Rescue Water Craft Coxswain is injured, knocked off the RWC or has died, the Crew person must take their position and do so with competence.

And during the struggle they may need to recover or rescue their teammate or survivors in the water and finish the recovery to the end point of transfer.

Crew must possess the same skills and knowledge base as the Coxswain. This is a close quarter boat for persons on board, everyone is part of the stability or instability of the craft underway to some extent.

Those not in the lead may not give credit to those in the flanks.

1. Prepare an effective vetting program for all participants, ensure their physical and mental strength is adequate
2. Monitor Weather and water conditions underway
3. Prepare properly Personal Protective Equipment
4. Inspect and maintain the vessel according to the manufacturer specifications
5. Train like your life and others depend upon it
6. Assess and remedy any necessary corrections that are discovered
7. Investigate mishaps and revise training or program management immediately
8. Clearly define your area of operation, seasonally, daily or with disasters in mind. Set limits.
9. Proper budget needed to maintain a marine unit

A Rescue Water Craft is a boat. It is not a cheap excuse to rescue or a shortcut.

It is not an inexpensive boat. It is a high-performance craft that requires proper funds, professional maintenance (monthly and annual) necessary to maintain a sufficient program for each craft.

If you or your organization is not treating your RWC program like a boat marine unit, close it down immediately. Do not proceed! Get off the boat and restructure your maritime program.

That mountain is waiting for the storm to show you where your problems are and it may very well take life. At that point you cannot afford the program you should have put in place before tragedy strikes.

My friend Lee Selman sent me this book ‘Tigers of the Snow’, written by Jonathan Neale.

The perspective of culture, lifesaving and information is a must read.

You will discover how the narrative of truth can become a Long Life (Tse Tso), or lead to certain death by personal volition.

We choose. Choose this book and gain insight into training, communication, planning and strategy and why it must be purposeful:

TIGERS OF THE SNOW

While you are at it, look up the history of the Sherpas and their contributions. We honor those pioneers and preserve their history. All lifesavers are unique souls who would give their life for others. This crosses all disciplines and mediums, earth, sky or water.

Things are getting better. People are humbling themselves to address the problems they have occurred. These assessments are working. Encourage one another to continue to foster developing our Rescue Water Craft culture.

Do not remain silent when a mishap occurs, dig in, expose the problems and save the life of yourself or a teammate.

That is the answer.

__________________

Posted: August 13, 2019

Content Creator of Rescue Water Craft and Personal Water Craft boating international education standards: Shawn Alladio is the world’s foremost authority and leading subject matter expert. She cares most about her community and the culture surrounding the safety of event service providers and Rescue Water Craft operators, working hard and dedicated towards protecting their reputation, distributing safety information and continuing to train these amazing individuals to the highest standards of care.

__________

Have any questions? Join the Rescue Water Craft Association
and discover what your community is doing to modernize standards, safety and reduce liability!
Join the Rescue Water Craft Association

Use at your own risk. Please take a qualified Rescue Water Craft training course and maintain proper records and respect all the PWC, RWC, PPE, and gear OEM manufacturer warning labels and cautions.

To Train is to Know Yourself

The Legacy of Thought

You will have to train your mind if you want to know who you truly are.

Reality based rescue that will put you under serious pressure will expose your weakness.

Alternatively, if could also expose your calm behaviors and steadiness.

What are the values that make you better at your intended goals?

It is important that you identify this structure now.

Decide on your virtues and your goals will draft in that direction.

VOLUME

Do you set your goals on high so the volume increases?

This may be the way to understand that speed and poor imitation is not the correct direction.

And the obverse compliment may incite the legend of your capability.

Consider a master.

A person who dedicates their mind to the pursuit of an action that is quantified by skills measured, accounted and based on the result of evidence.

Let us entertain the truth of physics.

QUANITFY

Actions are quantifiable through our thoughts. If we can perceive the selection process in sequence it is possible to practice a purposeful result.

Think about it. Wrap your mind in thought. Do not be mediocre. Arrogance likewise is a waste of oxygen.

Conquest will only appear when surrendering the ego and becoming part of the flow of forward movement. This is a great void of emotion.

Only a calm, steady mind can pursue excellence.

Be careful, you become what you think.

If you are negative, there will reside your results. And your team will suffer for it.

__________________
Posted: July 29, 2019

Content Creator of Rescue Water Craft and Personal Water Craft boating international education standards: Shawn Alladio is the world’s foremost authority and leading subject matter expert. She cares most about her community and the culture surrounding the safety of event service providers and Rescue Water Craft operators, working hard and dedicated towards protecting their reputation, distributing safety information and continuing to train these amazing individuals to the highest standards of care.

__________

Have any questions? Join the Rescue Water Craft Association
and discover what your community is doing to modernize standards, safety and reduce liability!
Join the Rescue Water Craft Association

Use at your own risk. Please take a qualified Rescue Water Craft training course and maintain proper records and respect all the PWC, RWC, PPE, and gear OEM manufacturer warning labels and cautions.

PERSONAL WATER CRAFT OFFSHORE RIDING

PREPARE

If you are interested in riding offshore from the coast further than a 2-mile distance you need to seriously plan about your excursion for safety. You don’t want to stress your family or colleagues.

You can save yourself the embarrassment of an investigation if you have a mishap offshore by pre-planning your route and gear.

You will need to plan ahead.

1. Know what the fuel range of your Personal Water Craft is
2. Operate during daylight hours
3. File a Float Plan
4. Carry a Marine Band Radio (VHF) set to Ch. 16
5. Carry a GPS tracking device on your person such as a SPOT locator or a inReach device
6. Make sure your craft is seaworthy and properly maintained, conduct a pre-launch thorough inspection
7. It is best not to operate with a passenger on board due to safety
8. Plan ahead by monitoring the water and weather conditions, even while underway. Do not operate in lightning will be 10 miles in your zone. Monitor the NOAA Marine Weather Service channel.
9. Have an emergency plan in effect in case something goes wrong or your PWC sinks. You may need to purchase Vessel Assist and ask them what the range is.
10. Talk to your local U.S.C.G or Harbor office and let them know your offshore plans and contact them when you return.

MONITOR WEATHER AND WATER

If properly prepared operating offshore is not a problem, but quickly amplifies when one simply pushes out.

Search and Rescue calls can cost millions of dollars and they can be billed back to the PWC registered owner.

File a digital float plan. Add in all your vessel identification, and yours. Sign up trusted friends or family who will monitor and track.

When you arrive back identify in the float plan that your ride is completed.

Float Plan Registry: https://floatplanregistry.com/index.php

SAFE AT SEA

Make sure you have a safety kit with you and that you do not travel alone.

We have done many long distance and offshore rides out to 40 miles off the coast and sometimes further, but we are prepared with additional fuel and safety plans. Some of our distances have covered 1,800 miles in 6 days.

I would only advise this on a 3 or 4 seater craft, not on a Sport or Stand Up model.

Preparation is the key to go out to sea and it will require your best seamanship skills.

__________________
Posted: July 17, 2019

Content Creator of Rescue Water Craft and Personal Water Craft boating international education standards: Shawn Alladio is the world’s foremost authority and leading subject matter expert. She cares most about her community and the culture surrounding the safety of event service providers and Rescue Water Craft operators, working hard and dedicated towards protecting their reputation, distributing safety information and continuing to train these amazing individuals to the highest standards of care.

__________

Have any questions? Join the Rescue Water Craft Association
and discover what your community is doing to modernize standards, safety and reduce liability!
Join the Rescue Water Craft Association

Use at your own risk. Please take a qualified Rescue Water Craft training course and maintain proper records and respect all the PWC, RWC, PPE, and gear OEM manufacturer warning labels and cautions.

SPECIFY YOUR QUESTIONS

THINK OF THE ANSWER

When you can specify your questions, you are arriving to an answer. Why such an oxymoron?

Because to question is to seek and in our K38 courses we challenge our students to first think of the answer as best they know in present time.

I’ve observed thousands of students over three decades. What I have learned from them is they seek an echo to their daemon, their inner guide.

INSTINCT

For the most part I witness that people do not trust their instinct, they are waiting for someone to blow a whistle to prompt them to move. And this is most damaging.

Our goal and yours should be to specify in as many terms of definition that is possible in any given action.

This ensures that you are taking responsibility for your learning. It really is up to you and not your coaches, you decide if you are going to learn and on your terms. So, study, constantly and ask questions.

VALUE

When you start to change the way you mentally engage with your learning capability your objective will become a true mark, rather than an imitation of someone else’s interpretation.

Determine your operational responsibility, you can redefine your inherent value by predetermining your destiny.

You do this by choice. You do this by seeking, searching for the meaning and purpose through utility.

This is your personal miracle and its not unlikely if you pursue to act upon learning. Don’t just read and watch, decipher the terms and organize the structures. You will become educated with purpose.
Trust me, ask me how I know?

______________________
Posted: June 18, 2019

Content Creator of Rescue Water Craft and Personal Water Craft boating international education standards: Shawn Alladio is the world’s foremost authority and leading subject matter expert. She cares most about her community and the culture surrounding the safety of event service providers and Rescue Water Craft operators, working hard and dedicated towards protecting their reputation, distributing safety information and continuing to train these amazing individuals to the highest standards of care.

__________

Have any questions? Join the Rescue Water Craft Association
and discover what your community is doing to modernize standards, safety and reduce liability!
Join the Rescue Water Craft Association

Use at your own risk. Please take a qualified Rescue Water Craft training course and maintain proper records and respect all the PWC, RWC, PPE, and gear OEM manufacturer warning labels and cautions.

EMERGING BEHAVIORS

Not All Knowledge is Equal

Emerging behaviors are a part of continuing education, science and development.

This idea of emergence has been around since at least the time of Aristotle!

Definition of emergency
1: an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action
2: an urgent need for assistance or relief the mayor declared a state of emergency after the flood. *

Attributed origin: Mid-17th century from medieval Latin emergentia, from Latin emergere ‘arise, bring to light’.

Emergent human behaviors are influenced. We like to focus on education and physical behaviors based off the mindset of knowledge a Coxswain pools or draws their selection process from.

REQUIRE CORRESPONDING ACTIONS

Effective training is coordinated to relieve the possibility of chaos in our maritime community. Chaos generally arises during the stages preceding a mishap.

We can align them from a beginning point of program inception, vessel and equipment selection, maintenance training and enforcement, recurring training, adaptive maritime standards and subsequent reviews.

When we initiate a training program in motion with a group of individuals the experience, maturity and physical levels are varied.

There are a lot of considerations to entertain in drawing up the expertise and the lack of knowledge and merging it into one unified and consistent motion.

This collective is a continual process of education which focuses specifically on tier level skills and evaluations corresponding with corrections and continual dialogue. Agencies need to adopt this same behavior for their program management.

TRANSCEND COMFORT

To do so competently requires a set of rules, laws or guidelines. Or we could call them standards. Typically based off past experiences ranging from positive to tragic.

We look to the boating safety community for the guidelines to proceed forward. We look to the coxswains in the field mishap reports and after-action reviews to determine how to modernize. What works and what is a dead end and needs to be discarded or modified?

But they first need to be challenged appropriately.

The success of training is dependent upon the trends, products, equipment updates, electronic migrations that continually evolve and interfacing with the select water type of operation.

You can increase your program efficiency if you do the following:

1. Ask your personnel to challenge a current training evolution with evidence opposing it.
2. Be willing to trial it in safe conditions.
3. Evaluate the results with everyone on board.
4. Video the demonstration and study it.
5. Review it again.
6. Final consensus review
7. Solicit outside peer review

That my friends are how we do this at K38, and we think it will work great for you.

*Merriman Webster Dictionary

______________________
Posted: June 15, 2019

Content Creator of Rescue Water Craft and Personal Water Craft boating international education standards: Shawn Alladio is the world’s foremost authority and leading subject matter expert. She cares most about her community and the culture surrounding the safety of event service providers and Rescue Water Craft operators, working hard and dedicated towards protecting their reputation, distributing safety information and continuing to train these amazing individuals to the highest standards of care.

__________

Have any questions? Join the Rescue Water Craft Association
and discover what your community is doing to modernize standards, safety and reduce liability!
Join the Rescue Water Craft Association

Use at your own risk. Please take a qualified Rescue Water Craft training course and maintain proper records and respect all the PWC, RWC, PPE, and gear OEM manufacturer warning labels and cautions.

Rescue Water Craft

ERROR TO ACHIEVE

Not All Knowledge is Equal

When we err in our training it is because we are striving to achieve specific learning objectives. This is the reason we all know why we train, we train to achieve.

You must understand how to hunger for the transcendent instead of the status quo, which is a bare minimum effort.

transcendent
a: exceeding usual limits: SURPASSING
b: extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience
c: far better or greater than what is usual

The Latin verb scandere means "to climb", so transcend has the basic meaning of climbing so high that you cross some boundary. *

Your coach aka ‘instructor’ will share with you examples of their best-known practices. That is a starting point.

Prior to training your known realization was sufficient enough to maintain where you ‘where’. But to get to another level of competency you have to park that lower resolution knowledge that worked fine for the duration of operations you sustained.

Then you need to head towards warp speed to acquire higher functioning actions, through the scrutiny of a guide with those skills you desire to apply! Can you guide yourself? Possibly, but you need goals that are structured.

MOVING FORWARD

There is more knowledge than you are aware of. Do you want to acquire it?

If you said yes, then do not be comfortable, remain unreasonable and start asking questions.

1. Get out a piece of paper. Write 5 of your last mishaps.

Detail them out from the start to the finish.

2. Now Write 5 solutions!

Detail those solutions in comparison

This exercise will help you in all things.

TRANSCEND COMFORT

Keep after it, seek knowledge, don’t have a closed ego, use that internal power properly and accordingly. You must strive for the transcendent in your field.

If you think you know it all, then there is not reason to speak to you. Ignorance holds us hostage to progress.
Those who are curious are brave. They see the water rescue world as a continual adjustment of skills and equipment.

Error is our enemy and that resides within us, keep your mind organized on target goals and achieve them. From this you will continue to acquire the rescue mindset of wisdom our ancestors passed on and we ignore.

This is a moral obligation of service for water rescue. Keep moving ahead, when you are comfortable its' time to start learning something new!

Stay steady friends!

______________________
Posted: June 15, 2019

Content Creator of Rescue Water Craft and Personal Water Craft boating international education standards: Shawn Alladio is the world’s foremost authority and leading subject matter expert. She cares most about her community and the culture surrounding the safety of event service providers and Rescue Water Craft operators, working hard and dedicated towards protecting their reputation, distributing safety information and continuing to train these amazing individuals to the highest standards of care.

__________

Have any questions? Join the Rescue Water Craft Association
and discover what your community is doing to modernize standards, safety and reduce liability!
Join the Rescue Water Craft Association

Use at your own risk. Please take a qualified Rescue Water Craft training course and maintain proper records and respect all the PWC, RWC, PPE, and gear OEM manufacturer warning labels and cautions.

SET A NEW LIMIT

CONCEPTUAL SCHEMES OF LEARNING

You've done a lot of difficult things in your Rescue Water Craft career. Have you gotten comfortable? Did you arrive at a level that you set as your baseline or have you driven to another level?

Wherever you last landed, its time to get traction going again. We must continue our education to avoid catastrophe in the field.

Remember, your training is not just about you, its your crew and the survivors, you are working for a lot of people who are depending upon your expertise and mental execution of critical decisions. This means you need to keep honing your skills.

PRUDENT MARINER

We cannot control the weather or the water conditions. However we can control ourselves. When we know where our capabilities last rested, we can appreciate that we are capable of much more!

Do you have a perception or a conceptual idea of what you limit is? Trust me, there is more. Perhaps you are too comfortable and
you haven't taken time to stay updated. There is nothing worse than to close the book and forget what you learned.

Pull out your training notes and review them.
Watch your training videos and look for the useless points of action and signal the highlights of potential.

STRUCTURE OF REALITY

There is so much opportunity in your potential. Don't restrict progress by being comfortable. Remain unreasonable and open up the Owner's Manual or get the Rescue Water Craft splashed and go over your basic fundamentals.

You are not what you could be as a Coxswain. Make a commitment to attain a new ideal, a new level!

Don't fall backwards, get back in the race and put the pedal to the metal and get your knowledge base going again!
______________________
Posted: May 1, 2019

Content Creator of Rescue Water Craft and Personal Water Craft boating international education standards: Shawn Alladio is the world’s foremost authority and leading subject matter expert. She cares most about her community and the culture surrounding the safety of event service providers and Rescue Water Craft operators, working hard and dedicated towards protecting their reputation, distributing safety information and continuing to train these amazing individuals to the highest standards of care.

__________

Have any questions? Join the Rescue Water Craft Association
and discover what your community is doing to modernize standards, safety and reduce liability!
Join the Rescue Water Craft Association

Use at your own risk. Please take a qualified Rescue Water Craft training course and maintain proper records and respect all the PWC, RWC, PPE, and gear OEM manufacturer warning labels and cautions.

LIVE LIKE YOUR HERO

LEGITIMACY

You are that person, its a legitimate potential of chaos and risk, and we want to come home and that is reliant on all our decisions in actuality.

Live like your hero or die a zero, cute sentence right? Could be true for some who have lost their life because one important action was missing from their behaviors underway.

We help each other when we help ourselves, we hold ourselves responsible and its an indication that we are the stewards that transform the risk of life lost to the recovery of life, and they are people, real like you and I. We are them and they are us.

We don't want you to suffer the neglect of an incomplete behavior or program. We care and our partners care. That is why we are in business and its a reflection of our mission.

Restrain your emotions and upgrade your professionalism. Yes this is important and its not just chatter.

Digital communication has evolved and we have adjusted, we must consider the objectives of digital influence. The competitiveness of attention online is a cycle of weakness.

The cycle of seeking likes and an audience we need to be cautious, publishing misleading content is not to be rewarded.

We need to triumph the negotiation of will that works diligently towards not causing harm.

We cannot afford a mishap the same as we cannot afford an unreputable post. It is your role to judge and decipher competency, this requires effort and investigation.

TAKE ACTION

Our communication and connectivity is greatly impacted by social media. We communicate in forums, private messages and groups. We confront publicly or privately the world we work in and how we want to transform deadly potentials into safe practices.

We have all made mistakes, we hold ourselves accountability because we believe we are the steward of this sacred trust. We have a huge responsibility, its a significant burden in fact. Let's make our digital footprint one of validity, valor and encouragement of safe practices.

How can you live like your Hero? Most of our outreach is conducted on social media. You can be a digital hero or a zero, ensure that your posts are clearly stated and that if you are presenting an argument, be prepared to have a solution.

If the photo or video shows behaviors that are skeptical, move on.

Think about what you are posting.

1. Is this your current knowledge level
2. Have you seen other practices that may challenge it
3. Have you researched the difference and made a conclusion on which direction to follow?

If they are not representing safe practices, move on. If they are not showing boating navigation rules properly, move on. If they are sensationalizing and hyping up dangerous and negligent operations, move on.

THINGS HAVE TO MAKE SENSE

There has to be meaning in our shares, this is how we can sustain our maritime community. We do need to challenge and discuss pertinent information. It should not be impulsive and narrow but by taking on the high end of responsibility and then you have a reason to question motives and results. You become a credit to yourself and our community, and we need you!

Digital conflict is real, and sometimes its not sufficient and lacks the next step and can be misinterpreted. Make sure you outline that and explain it in your descriptive field.

Professionalism will place their name on their work, their articles will be consistent and well sourced. Follow these people. Use your tools for searches.

Many online pages are stealing content, altering the original presentation and altering it for dramatization and likes. Be careful if you repost these type of images. Take responsibility for your choices, its going to take you time, yes, but you may be a leader that is needed now and people are listening!

Think before you share information that is misinformation, be the solution. Lives depend upon it!

____________

Posted: April 28, 2019

Have any questions? Join the Rescue Water Craft Association
and discover what your community is doing to modernize standards, safety and reduce liability!
Join the Rescue Water Craft Association

Content Creator: Shawn Alladio cares most about her community and the culture surrounding the safety of event service providers and Rescue Water Craft operators, working hard and dedicated towards protecting their reputation, distributing safety information and continuing to train these amazing individuals to the highest standards of care.

Use at your own risk. Please take a qualified Rescue Water Craft training course and maintain proper records and respect all the PWC, RWC, PPE, and gear OEM manufacturer warning labels and cautions.

THE TRUTH OF PROGESSION

PROFESSIONALISM IS A BEHAVIOR

The truth of progression lies in our choices regarding education. The educational abilities are going to become our actions.

Our behaviors as professionals are storied in the prevention of accidents, drowning or deaths. Its a huge responsibility and requires serious dynamics of time and focus.

How do we determine fake news and fake programs? They should be vested in a credible resource that has vetted the program and pitted it against USCG boating rules to start with.

Does the program have meaning?

Does the program represent the equipment manufacturer recommendations and inspections?

As a subject matter expert who created the RWC and night qualification programming I have seen very few programs that thrive. Most of them are moving towards something unreliable. This is not optional.

Their program goals are misaligned. That means they don't have their fundamentals clearly aligned with seamanship skills.

We see this often in digital media presentations.

TAKE ACTION

What can you do regarding fake Maritime news and unsafe practices?

1. Take Responsibility and be Skeptical: Safety is a behavior, it is not a ‘click’ or a retweet or a repost!

2. Who is the Poster? Do they have 10 or 20 years of expertise on the subject? Do you see a red flag?

MEDIA OUTLETS DO NOT REPRESENT OUR COMMUNITY

When you read an online article, use discernment and realize most of the content may be patched or haphazard. Many use stock images that do not relate to the incident or craft design. Their terminology may be wrong. If you give an interview ask them to allow you to proof it first for release, or decline the invitation:

Research the Presented Content: Discover the factual evidence. Use google to put in key words, then see how many similar stories are discovered and do they align and are they reputable sources? Who is the original source? Search google images, videos and text. Is the content original or pirated? This undermines our professionalism with false data.

What Does the Evidence State? When you stop at a meme, photo or mishap video, open up tabs on the browsers and start reading and reviewing the presented content. Is it professional? Research and determine if the source is credible and its presenting a 100% solution to their viewership. Otherwise you are the problem in partnership with their unreliable marketing goals.

THINGS HAVE TO MAKE SENSE

We have to be able to negotiate our boating safety practices and protect our seamanship skills.

They have to make sense. This means you must be a boater first and a rescuer second, its not the other way around!

There are no shortcuts for water rescue teams, when you incorporate a Rescue Water Craft, you now have a marine unit. The rules change and you cannot dumb them down, in fact you need to ramp up your game! These are not toys, they are serious power craft.

Accidents should not represent our maritime community, competency should! No person who creates a mishap should be called a hero, nor lauded as competent, instead urge them to understand the risk better and to resist dumbing down the reality.

Lifesaving depends upon professional behaviors and actions, anything else is deadly, dangerous, negligent, or bearing on gross negligence.

____________

Posted: April 28, 2019

Have any questions? Join the Rescue Water Craft Association
and discover what your community is doing to modernize standards, safety and reduce liability!
Join the Rescue Water Craft Association

Content Creator: Shawn Alladio cares most about her community and the culture surrounding the safety of event service providers and Rescue Water Craft operators, working hard and dedicated towards protecting their reputation, distributing safety information and continuing to train these amazing individuals to the highest standards of care.

Use at your own risk. Please take a qualified Rescue Water Craft training course and maintain proper records and respect all the PWC, RWC, PPE, and gear OEM manufacturer warning labels and cautions.