Unless you have given up boating, keep your flares - you can never have enough if/when you get into trouble. Legally you need (I think) 3 flares. My opinion is that you will go through 3 flares very quickly, especially if it's in the middle of the night when few boats are out. However, you need to store them separately from your legal flares on the boat.
I probably have 15 years of expired flares in a box labeled "expired".
#1687030 - 07/05/1608:40 AM
Re: Disposal of expired marine signal flares
[Re: ChooChoo]
Tieg
Member
Registered: 01/30/04
Posts: 1513
Loc: SE CT
I have 3 expired flares from when I bought our pontoon boat at cabelas in 2011. Was told I needed them as required by law. But then I read last year if you only stay in freshwater and don't go into marine waters you don't need flares. So I just keep them as a rather have them and not need them then to need them and not have them deal. With the amount of traffic on Gardner I doubt I'll ever need them although it seems a lot of the boaters might not give you the time of day if in distress unless you threw a expired flare at them.
"I think of this war as it really is, not as the people at home imagine, with a hoorah! and a roar. It is very serious, very grim…" Manfred von Richthofen (aka The Red Baron)