another boater life, lost

[Tim R.]

Sad, I dont know what it is about the holidays... I was in my motor boat trying to get out the channel to the bigger water, I had three different boats towing tubers near me, one after another they dumped their rider in front of me. I had no where to go and had to come to a complete stop,which wasn't so bad, but who puts their riders in a situation like that? Someone less attentive may have accidentally not seen the riders in water. There was bigger water all around but they chose literally the worst spot... And it was three boats that seemed completely unrelated to each other.

On st. Patty's day all the ametuer drinkers come out of the woodwork. On july 4th weekend, all the ametuer boaters come out. I saw a 24 ft. Sailboat loaded with 12 people T-bone a dock. I also saw a 40 ft. Sport fisher almost hit a beautiful Hinckley that was at a face dock. That was at my marina within 5 minutes of each other..

Tonight we had a 40ft. Oday try to illegally assert her rights on us in a race and end up colliding with another boat. The infractions that 6 of us witnessed were as follows:

- 3rd boat in the magic circle not giving way to the first 2
- sailing an improper course just to assert sbd rules on us
- hitting another boat that was not making way(in irons)
-failing to round the mark
- failing to do the proper penalty turn before the completion of the race
- failure to offer assistance the the boat they disabled.

He will be writing a big check to repair the other boat.

 

[Maine Sail]

Tonight we had a 40ft. Oday try to illegally assert her rights on us in a race and end up colliding with another boat. The infractions that 6 of us witnessed were as follows:

- 3rd boat in the magic circle not giving way to the first 2
- sailing an improper course just to assert sbd rules on us
- hitting another boat that was not making way(in irons)
-failing to round the mark
- failing to do the proper penalty turn before the completion of the race
- failure to offer assistance the the boat they disabled.

He will be writing a big check to repair the other boat.

Yeah that accident was TOTALLY uncalled for. He was already on a proper course for the next mark when he fell off the wind and just about t-boned the Ericson in irons. We had already made our intentions early & clear to go astern of him well before he fell off and headed closer to the mark than he needed to. I can only guess he was focusing on us more, while yelling "starboard" than he should have and probably had no clue the Ericson was stalled in irons but they had been stalled for a good 30+ seconds already. Thousands and thousands in damages over what????

 

[Cpt. Jon]

When we went out, I had mentioned to my friends that are usually here visiting in June that it's a big boating weekend and we could expect to see either the coast guard or marine police... I had just launched my motorboat after some extensive work on it. We went to lunch at a local dive of a boatyard restaurant that we sometimes like and the coast guard was there...we watched them stop lots of people and I expected to be stopped, but wasn't. I'm not a big fan of boating on July 4, it just turns out to be too dangerous. On the 4th, we had a huge storm come through with winds of an estimated 70mph... Shortly before there were still at least 30 boats tied up at the "redneck yacht club" with lightning all around, I had to jump in the minivan and bail my daughter out of a parade as it got bad and made it before the weather, but had no idea what those boaters did...they were gone by the time I thought to check... Glad no one else was hurt due to the weather really!