Small boat emergency stop apparatus

An emergency stop apparatus for a small boat having an outboard motor mounted on a hull and equipped with an internal combustion engine to power a propeller to propel the hull forward, a cockpit installed in the hull for seating an operator of the boat, and a passenger seat installed in the hull at a position spaced apart from the cockpit for seating a passenger of the boat, comprising:

• an operator transmitter that is wearable by the operator and transmits a radio-wave signal of a predetermined strength;
• a passenger transmitter that is wearable by the passenger and transmits a radio-wave signal of the predetermined strength same as that of the operator transmitter;
• a receiver that is installed on the hull at a location closer to the cockpit than the passenger seat and receives the radio-wave signals transmitted by the operator transmitter and the passenger transmitter successively;
• a wearer identifying unit that identifies which of the operator and the passenger is a wearer of the transmitter that transmits the radio-wave signal and received by the receiver between the radio-wave signal transmitted from the operator transmitter and the radio-wave signal transmitted from the passenger transmitter;
• an emergency discriminating unit that discriminates whether strength of the radio-wave signal transmitted from the wearer identified by the wearer identifying unit is smaller than a predetermined value and discriminates that an emergency occurred in the wearer when the strength of the ratio-wave signal transmitted from the wearer is smaller than the predetermined value;
• and
• an emergency action unit that performs an emergency action comprised of an engine stop action for stopping the engine of the outboard motor or an engine speed reducing action for reducing speed of the engine of the outboard motor when it is discriminated by the emergency discriminating unit that the emergency occurred in the wearer.