People just need to embrace that there is technology available and there's new technologies out there that can save lives. This is the Ben Taylor Podcast, the home of Marine Industry Insights. Enjoy. Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Ben Taylor Podcast, the home of Marine Industry Insights. This particular series is all about profiling Australian yachting businesses. We're actually here with one, I think, technically from New Zealand, but it's close enough. That's fine. I'm here with PJ and we're going to hear a lot about marina safety and a safety system that he's developed. So, PJ, great to see you. I've been. Nice to see you. I know we've tried to meet a few times. We have. I flew to the UK and you flew over here. I wasn't there, but we've crossed paths, so it's great to make the most of this opportunity because you're in a space that I didn't know quite how much of an issue this is and how frequent really quite dangerous things happen in marinas. They do, Ben, and it's been an issue for marinas and it hasn't really come to light in the past. People fall in the water when they're on a dock and a lot of people can't climb out. New Zealand, which has 50 commercial marinas a year, averages around two deaths a year. Around the world, America did a study on deaths in marinas and that finished in 2018. That covered eight years and there was 108 drownings in their marinas. That's a lot. It is a lot. It's quite hard to comprehend how many people that is. Like 108 people, you look at a marina, one of the last things you're thinking about is safety for most people. A lot of people go out and it's not their boats that they're going to, so they're not used to the environment. They go out there to have a few drinks and they're not thinking, what happens at one in the morning if I've had too many and I fall in? There's a bit of a story here, so what's your story? What did you come across that really made you switch, I suppose, from it would be a wonderful thing to have safety systems like this into a marina to you want to pursue this and make sure that that changes? I was living on a boat in Melbourne. I'd separated from my wife and couldn't afford to buy a house and a boat seemed like a really good option. My kids were young, they loved it. Then one night, a lady on the next row over fell into the marina getting on board her boat and she spent 20 minutes in the water before somebody heard her screaming for help. I was on the next row over and I didn't hear her calling for help. I had my kids on board that night. When somebody finally pulled her out, her legs were cut to shreds from the barnacles underneath the waterline. She was just trying to climb out. She was trying to climb out. There's no ladders close by. It's actually quite difficult. Even just getting out of a pool when it's almost water level, it's quite difficult. It is. Something like a marina raft or a marina structure, it's often quite difficult. When you're fully dressed. We're just filming. Oh. It's alright. When there's a big height difference between the water level and a platform, that's a big old pool. You're fully dressed. For anybody. Yeah, fully dressed. There's cold water shock that sets in straight away so people often get disorientated and not sure where they are or how they ended up where they are. And it was hearing about that story where I went, there's got to be a better way of doing this. And I come from a Defence Force background where I worked in safety equipment. And I was trying to think of ladder designs and I realised it wasn't ladders. It was actually letting that person in the water signal for help. Right, so there's plenty of help around. Things that could assist that person in the water. But that communication you found was the big determining factor. Whether they received the help they need or whether they were left there in a quite bad situation. Letting that person in the water be heard. Yeah. And I thought when I moved to Melbourne, I got off a tram and I pulled on the cord. And I thought, why can't we do that for a marina? And that was absolutely my lightbulb moment. You know, I waited for Bunnings to open the next day and I went and bought some timber and made a model of the marina and wrapped some wire around it and showed the manager and he said, I think you're on to something. And I haven't been able to let it go since then. And a couple of years later, we've got a working system, we've saved two lives. And a dog. And yeah, I'm really proud of where we've got to, but there's a lot of work to be done. Yeah, I just should be. And we'll get into more detail of how that might evolve. Can you talk us through this? How this works? Why it's effective? Just everything about it. Sure. So what we have is on a marina's edge, we'll have one of these switches, which are located, which sit underneath the whalers. And they're a bi-directional switch. And they're attached every 30 meters or so along the dock. And these are battery operated. So when you pull on the rope, when you're in the water, that will activate one or two switches. Right, so there's a series of these, there'll be a line from this to the next one. And then that whole line is then your pull cord. Yeah, so it doesn't matter where you fall into the marina, you don't have to swim to a certain part of the marina to activate the alarm. Yeah, so a marina perimeter of each leg, each finger. Each main walkway, because 95% of people that fall in the water in a marina fall in off the main walkway, getting onto their boat or getting off their boat. And that sends a whaler signal to a dock alarm. And these dock alarms are located probably every 50 meters along the marina. And these also have a duress button on them. So if it's an on-dock emergency, like a fire or a sinking boat or a medical emergency, somebody can just hit that button, like that. And that sets off the dock alarm. And it's a flush as well. So if there's these every 50 meters-ish, why does that help? Obviously, there's immediate attention from the sound. There is. From like a marina operator perspective, do they know which zone? Absolutely. Do they just kind of go onto the docks and hear it and go that way? How does that all work? So these send a signal through a base station and a gateway, which then sends out instant text, email, and app notifications to whoever the marina has programmed into the system. And that notification says, critical rope pull alarm, G-Row berth 7 to 10. So that's why we have a switch every 30 meters, to give accuracy. You go straight there, that's where the assistance is needed, and you can allocate resources accordingly. Correct. And the two lives that we have saved so far, the first people there were on the marina. They didn't see or hear the people go in, but they heard the dock alarm and they decided to go investigate. So they were first at the people's side. Could you tell the story a little bit more fully and in detail, because I think people need to understand that like so many of the industry are boaters, we're very familiar with the cleats that are every five feet along a marina's edge. There are people that are not aware of that. There are circumstances where people are less able, they're not just walking. And so it's more easy, it's more frequent and significantly more dangerous for those types of people to end up in the water. 100% correct. When people go out onto a dock, they're not thinking about their safety if they fall in. And yeah, a lot of the coroner's reports that I get and I look over, they're actually people who are used to marinas, and they are people that own boats. And most of them are males, sadly, most of them are 45 to 65 years old. And they're out there on their own working on their boat, or they've had a couple of beers and they don't want to drive home. And they're staying on their boat the night and they're the ones that are being found in the morning. It's tragic reading all these coroner's reports, but it gives me a great insight. It's not always the commercial areas, the really high traffic areas where people are dying. It's often the... So it's a low traffic, it's quietly this happens. That's correct. It's a bit of a misconception from the industry that the system's perfect for commercial areas. It's perfect for every platform, but especially those where there's not always somebody around and there's somebody out on their boat on their own. And so how is this going down in the industry? What stage is the industry at in terms of an understanding of this is a big issue, that something needs to be done here because people are losing lives? And what's the adoption like? How's it received? It's in its infancy, Ben, to be honest. There hasn't been a system like this before. There's been life rings and ladders on marinas since marinas were invented. Some marinas don't like having ladders. A lot of them don't like having ladders because they don't want to encourage people swimming. Now there's a new technology available, I think a lot of people are starting to take notice of it, and we're getting a lot of support from insurance companies and people interested because we're lowering risk for a marina and we're saving lives. So yeah, there was that report that was done in the States by Carl Wolf, he was the first person in the world really to shine a light on deaths in marinas, and apparently I'm the second. So if you look at it, there's no real difference from working at height to a fall in the water from a marina dock, and you look at what sort of regulations there are around working from heights these days, and the risk is death. Yeah, and there's almost none around this situation. And you've experienced some falls yourself, and it's, I suppose, presented the moment where normally you're a fit and shaped guy that would be perfectly comfortable just lifting yourself up. January, I was standing on a pontoon talking with a guy about work, and I took a step backwards one too many. Almost ironically about these systems. Yeah, and I hit the dock with my arm on the way in and dislocated my shoulder, and before I knew it, I opened up my eyes and I was underwater, and I heard my shoulder go back into place and realized that I was in a little bit of trouble and got to the surface, and my mate panicked a little bit, but we both got our heads and he went and found me a decent-sized ladder. But in that time I spent hanging on to the marina with one arm. You're thinking like, this is why you've designed this, this is why you're here trying to push it and say, well. This is what it feels like, and the range of emotions that went through my head at that time were pretty significant, and afterwards as well, and five months later I still don't have full movement in my shoulder. The fires never burnt out with my passion for this, and it just increased in January. I went, this is why I'm doing it. There's a guy in Melbourne that spent five hours in the water trying to get out of a marina two years ago, and in his autopsy he had a broken shoulder as well, so I was probably going through exactly what he went through, but I had somebody else around me and he didn't. And so, how is this, how do you want to bring this to market, like in an ideal world, how do you plan to get this into every marina everywhere, whether it's your system or just a safety system of a similar nature for the same purpose? How does that happen, how's the, how are you going to do that? I look forward to having those issues, Ben, and I hope we can partner up with different companies around the world who are interested in taking our safety system on board, because every floating pontoon is a risk of somebody going in. We've already had interest from the UK, from manufacturers over there, and tech companies that are keen on the possibility of building our system overseas for us. And so, in terms of who actually takes action, who buys this, who drives this, what are the influencing factors, because I'm thinking like a little bit from a regulatory perspective, that would be great. Absolutely. That would be a pretty overnight switch from a nice-to-have to a must-have. Sure. That would drive it. Can marinas and individual marinas do it, like a relatively small company do this, does it take the marina groups to get on board, what happens? It takes every PCBU, really, that's in charge of safety at a marina to stand up and say, we need to do something about this. The risk of somebody falling in is there, and the risk of them dying is real because it's happened before. Insurance companies, they've started to get behind us now, and they see the value in our system. Right, so they're evaluating the risk of the liabilities in the marina, and going, well, have one of these, your liabilities are lower, so here's a more favorable premium. Exactly, yeah. When you have an insurance policy on your vehicle, it says, if you can come up with something that reduces risk, you've got to let us know, and it's the same for marinas. Yeah, if you have a black box and drive more sensibly. And people just need to embrace that there is technology available, and there's new technologies out there that can save lives, so that's the biggest thing is, yeah, there is a problem in the industry with deaths, and we need to get everybody on board. It takes a village, doesn't it? And when you do get that phone call from a marina manager to say, PJ, congrats, you just saved your first life, that's something you never forget, and people can be a part of that. Do you get in touch with PJ? It's PJ Williams, and it's Marina Overboard? Man Overboard Marina Alarm Systems. Man Overboard Marina Alarm Systems. Really nice person, obviously a fantastic mission to be driving, so thank you for your insights. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for coming on, and I wish you all the best. Appreciate it. See you again next time, everybody. Bye. See you. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Ben Taylor Podcast, the home of marine industry insights. We'll see you again very soon. Bye for now.