LAKE LIFE · KNOW BEFORE YOU GO
Water safety and life jacket rules
Lake Lanier life jacket rules are short, specific and worth reading once before the first trip of the year — especially since there are no lifeguards anywhere on the lake.
Lake Lanier life jacket rules
MUST WEAR ONE
Children under 13
Georgia law requires every child under 13 to wear an appropriately sized life jacket at all times while on a moving vessel. Not stowed under the seat — worn.
ONE PER PERSON, ON BOARD
Everyone else
Every vessel must carry a Coast Guard-approved wearable life jacket for each person aboard. Boats 16 feet and longer, canoes and kayaks excepted, also need a throwable device. Anyone riding a personal watercraft or being towed has to be wearing theirs.
FORGOT YOURS?
The Lake Lanier Association runs free life jacket loaner stations around the lake, stocked in infant, child, youth and adult sizes. Forsyth-side stations include Charleston Park, Mary Alice Park at both the beach and the boat ramp, Shady Grove Campground and Young Deer Park. Volunteers keep them stocked from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Borrow one, use it, put it back.
On the water
Four rules that account for most of what a game warden will stop you for on a summer weekend.
IDLE SPEED
The 100-foot rule
Stay at idle speed within 100 feet of a moored, anchored or drifting boat, a dock, pier, piling or bridge structure, a person in the water, or a shoreline next to a home, public park, beach, marina or restaurant. Wake-jumping inside that distance counts as reckless operation.
0.08, OR 0.02 UNDER 21
Under the influence
Georgia treats boating under the influence seriously: penalties reach a $1,000 fine and up to a year, and refusing a test can cost your boating privileges for up to a year. Operating impaired with a child under 14 on board is a separate offense.
LIGHTS AND LIMITS
After sunset
Personal watercraft may not run between sunset and sunrise, and neither may wake surfing or wakeboarding. Boats 16 feet and longer must show navigation lights from sunset to sunrise and in fog or heavy rain.
BORN 1998 OR LATER
Boater education
Anyone born on or after January 1, 1998 must have passed a Georgia-approved boater education course and carry the card on board to operate a motorized vessel. Under 12 may not operate a vessel 16 feet or longer at all.
Swimming
SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK
No lifeguards, anywhere
The Corps of Engineers manages 13 day-use swimming areas on Lake Lanier and none of them is staffed by a lifeguard. Swim in designated areas, never swim alone, and keep an adult within arm’s reach of small children.
RAMPS AND DOCKS
Where swimming is off limits
Swimming is prohibited at launching sites, designated mooring points and public docks. Jumping, diving or swinging from bridges and other structures over the lake is prohibited as well.
BELOW BUFORD DAM
On the first three miles of the Chattahoochee River below the dam, life jacket wear is mandatory for everyone wading, boating or floating. Water released from the dam is cold and the level can rise fast — check the release schedule before you go in.
Read the rules straight from the source
Georgia’s boating laws, equipment checklists and education requirements are published by the Department of Natural Resources.