Welcome aboard! I’m your guide for the California Boater Safety Course, powered by StateBoatingCourse.com. Think of this course as your chart from total beginner to confident skipper. During our time together we’ll travel through six clear chapters, each one a leg of the journey:
Chapter 1: Know Your Boat & Gear
In this chapter we get familiar with hull shapes, capacity plates, life jackets, fire extinguishers, and every safety gadget that keeps you afloat.
Chapter 2: Before You Leave the Dock
Here we plan a trip the smart way—float plans, weather checks, legal paperwork, and a pre-departure checklist that stops problems before they start.
Chapter 3: Rules of the Road & Aids to Navigation
We’ll learn right-of-way rules, buoy meanings, lights, and horn signals so you can share the water without collisions or confusion.
Chapter 4: Safe Boat Handling & On-Water Etiquette
This chapter masters docking, turning, anchoring, towing skiers, managing your wake, and showing courtesy to everyone from kayakers to anglers.
Chapter 5: Emergencies & Special Situations
We tackle fire, capsizing, distress calls, invasive species, clean-water habits, and the general laws you must follow to keep your card—and your freedom.
Chapter 6: California Boating Laws & Local Waterways
Now we translate everything you’ve learned into Golden-State specifics—who must carry a California Boater Card, age and life-jacket limits, sunrise-to-sunset PWC rules, ski-flag and observer requirements, engine cut-off-switch mandates, security-zone buffers, invasive-species inspections, local speed and no-wake zones, and the accident-report deadlines the Division of Boating & Waterways expects you to meet before you can call California’s lakes, bays, and coastline home.
By the end you’ll not only pass the state exam, you’ll feel at home on any lake, bay, or river in California. So grab a seat, keep your hands and feet inside the virtual vessel, and let’s cast off together.
Course Content
About Instructor
Course Includes
- 5 Lessons
- 153 Topics
- 1 Quiz