MIAMI – Florida is viewed as the boating cash of the United States, with a lot more than a million vessels registered in the point out.
But Florida does not have to have a boating license and safety coaching requirements you should not use to complete generations of boaters.
Now, a single South Florida family members is making an attempt to transform that, by invoking their late daughter’s like of the water.
“Our goal is to have this flag littered all over Biscayne Bay,” Andy Fernandez explained.
This blue and yellow flag is nearly as bright as the lifetime it represents.
“I fly this flag proudly and in memory of Luciana Cristina Fernandez as a dedication to boater and watercraft basic safety,” included Melissa Fernandez.
Luciana Cristina Fernandez — Lucy or Lu to her pals and household– is eternally 17.
“She was an excellent pal, daughter, sister. She was a genuinely hard employee. And she had a good deal of targets and dreams and aspirations like each individual 17-12 months-aged,” said Melissa Fernandez, Lucy’s mother.
The Our Girl of Lourdes pupil died in a Labor Day Weekend boat crash in 2022.
“The irony of this complete point is, that was her delighted spot. That was her favourite factor to be out on the boat out on the h2o,” her father, Andy, reported.
Lucy’s parents say she grew up on boats and seemed forward to weekends on the drinking water.
“That was our aspiration, to have a boat like that. To raise our young children going on all those journeys, and with our close friends and with all of their close friends. And now I go and I sense a hesitation, I really feel a unhappiness, mainly because that aspect of our everyday living now has this cloud more than it,” Melissa mentioned.
Lucy was 1 of 14 persons out celebrating a friend’s birthday on board a 29-foot-vessel when it crashed into a channel marker in the vicinity of Boca Chita Essential.
Lucy’s mate, Katerina Puig, was seriously wounded and several more ladies ended up hurt when they ended up thrown overboard.
The boat’s operator was George Pino– the father of one particular of the women.
He faces misdemeanor rates of careless operation of a vessel.
The circumstance is still going via the courts, so the Fernandez loved ones did not want to remark on that.
Rather, they are targeted on creating boating safer for absolutely everyone.
“Boats aren’t like autos,” Melissa reported. “There is certainly no quit signs. There is certainly no lights that notify you ‘yield, you can find yet another boat coming’.”
Andy, a lifelong boater, suggests a ton has changed since he first started boating.
“Now, it is type of the wild west out there,” he mentioned. “The issues are the operators that do not have the needed practical experience, certifications and schooling.”
Florida does not require a license for boating.
The condition only necessitates everyone born following January 1, 1988 to full a boating security course and acquire a boating safety ID card.
That means at this time no one particular over 36 decades previous needs to just take any type of safety system to work a motorized boat.
Andy has looked at the quantities and believes one thing requirements to modify.
“The figures the earlier two several years are reliable that the age bracket concerned in most boating accidents, specially boating incidents where by there is a fatality or severe bodily injury, are in between 50 and 60 several years aged, the operators. And then the age team that is the the very least age team of acquiring had obtained the boater basic safety ID card is the 50 to 60-calendar year-previous classification.”
By the Lucy Fernandez Basis, the spouse and children launched the “Find out for Lu” marketing campaign to encourage folks to educate by themselves just before placing sail.
“In a split next (you) could be in command of that boat. Do you know what to do? How to sluggish it down? How to phone the Coast Guard on channel 16? I suggest, there’s like a checklist of matters that are essential. But if you’ve got never kind of absent by, you know, a instruction or track record, you would have no concept,” Andy claimed.
On Tuesday, Andy and Melissa have been honored at the Miami-Dade County Fee meeting with the Vilomah Award for turning their heartache into some thing optimistic for the group.
“This is the complete most devastating issue that any individual can go as a result of. Normal me would have gone into a cave and just dug in there and stated, ‘No, I want my room.’ But I mentioned to myself from the to start with next, ‘How would Lucy tackle this? And how would she want me as her mom to do this?’ And I assure you just about every choice that we have built, she has been at the forefront of anything.”
And now, Lucy’s memory is the center of their household.
Soon prior to her loss of life, Lucy and her mother planned to rework her bed room.
The teenager chose all the facts, down to the blue wallpaper and travel guides.
Her parents inevitably made a edition of her eyesight in their dwelling, knocking down a wall to make positive any individual who will come to the property, can come to feel Lucy’s presence.
“It is the heart of our dwelling and our spouse and children comes and sits in listed here,” Melissa stated of the room they have dubbed ‘The Gossip Room’. “We cry and we snicker and we just bear in mind her simply because each and every minimal element is a piece of her.”
The ending contact is a painting by Lucy’s grandfather depicting how he imagined her being named to heaven by the angels.
“She seriously did reside her existence every single day as if she someway understood that they had been counted,” Melissa mentioned. “In some cases, I would appear at her and I would just be in awe of the point that at 17 she experienced it so place together.”
“We want to make confident that her mild, her spirit, continues to shine,” Andy additional. “Which is what we strive to do each day. Some days are more durable than other folks. That is what we attempt to do.”
Andy and Melissa hope to finally just take their mission to Tallahassee to generate boating security laws.
For a lot more particulars on how to get a boating safety ID card, take a look at .
For a lot more info, stop by LucyFernandezFoundation.org
