Boat run over by bigger boat

[DRIFTER_016]

I am not offering a defense for the person driving the boat but it now makes sense why he had a blindspot for the other boat to be hidden. If you have a 34ft boat and you don't look before coming up on plane (the negligent part of this story)even with your trim tabs set back to neutral it can take over 200 yards before your bow drops down far enough to see directly ahead of you. A mistake that thankfully did not cost a life for sure. If you haven't driven a large boat then you have never felt the handling characteristics of one. They are as different as shooting a 22 and a 50 cal rifle both are guns but neither will prepare you for using the other. Large boats need twice as much attention to run as any of the smaller boats and until we can get the schooling and the practical information to both the smaller boat operators or targets as you should think of them as. Along with the big boat operators or jackasses playing with dynamite their will always be issues between them as we try to use the waters together. I by the way have a canoe, jetdrive outboard, bass boat and a 28ft cruiser and drive them all as though someones life is on the line.....because someones LIFE IS.This is not to inflame or cause an argument it is a view that some people are blind too because they have not seen this from all angles lacking the availablity or access to driving large vessels.

 

Art

 

I've run boats up to 50 feet and never come any where near running someone over. Even when running home in the dark after doing charters for the old symphony of fire, fire works shows. After the show is over there are hundreds of boats heading home and never had anything close to an issue.

It's all common sense and courtesy for others.

 

Last year I was heading up the channel back to the dock after a day of fishing and there was a boat exiting the area. He was on the wrong side of the channel and I had to evade by leaving the channel. I ripped a strip of the guy, as it turned out he had a pack of rug rats on the boat that got an education in swearology that day.

The guy had no clue, I can only hop he ran a ground on a rock and no longer owns a boat.

[Twocoda]

just to take Arts comments a step further .....if you are one of the "target boat" keep in mind the big guys have heads and anchors on them ....when they are stationary it legal to consume alcohol...and whats more fun than sitting in the middle of the lake pounding down a few coolies while the ladies rid themselves of tan lines...not the case for all im sure but if you boat defensively (like your supposed to drive your vehicle)...chances are youll never have a collision on the water...

 

what really ticks me off is when the cruisers remain up on plane at cruising speed in the fog and consider the radar the only thing that matters.... i have had two VERY close encounters one with a cruiser and one with a sailboat that still had full mast in 3 feet visibility

 

ive had many other incidences with fishing boats but those are a different story all together

[Handlebarz]

I was not shocked at all when I first heard of this as I see it many times every year. I put in alot of hours on LSC and WAY to many PARTY PEOPLE are out there on the water. I am not going to take a shot at my American friends here with this next statement but on any Sunday morning around 11:30am-1pm they are on the ride home and DONT CARE WHO IS IN THE WAY!!! they leave the Thames river and set the GPS you better look out as they will not.

 

My last run in was last weekend on fathers day I had my dads friend out (dad was to sick Sunday morning and stayed at home) His friend had no idea why these boats were heading towards us I let him know that they are heading home and would all pass with out a care he thought it was a joke until we had 2 of them come to close to us we called it a day as I did not need to play with the AS BAGS.

 

A few years back we were heading out the Thames river and here comes a large boat way to fast we could not turn around and there was alot of other small boats coming in and going out this AS BAG flew right in and then came off plane right in front of every one I had to gun my boat to jump his 4-5' wake my wife flew to the front of the boat and hurt her arms and legs I dont know how the other smaller boats were not flipped over.

 

I hate the others out here and there are way to many of them LSC can suck for this so please be ware if you come down and use my rule of thumb on early off early I try to get off the water by noon but some times the fish say stay longer. The best time is rainy days or fall cold it keeps the PARTY PEOPLE AWAY.

 

Sorry about the rant but these people suck and yes alot are Canadians like the old bugger in the story in the first post.

[camillj]

Thank god nobody was hurt !

[BillsTheBassMan]

Like the name implies; with a set of navigation (GPS)waypoints entered into a route; the autopilot, when engaged will automatically take you there. The sad part is that the systems that I seen do not have collision avoidance capabilities.

The autopilot will take you to a waypoint in the most direct route; regardless if anything is in your way.

 

Dan.

 

All I can say to that is Yikes :S

[CLofchik]

Heh, after paddling a canoe around Lake O harbours this kind of story doesn't surprise me a bit (well actually I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often). Atleast nobody was hurt, but I mean you can't really expect everybody to ALWAYS be looking infront of their boat, I mean jeez why do you think they put the lounge at the REAR!

 

 

This was put up in another forum a few days ago, not exactly clear but around the 2:20 mark a kayak is hooked up with a fish and a trolling charter boat (cruising over the feeding school of bass too, what the hell) runs into him with no one at the helm.

 

<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="

name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="

type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

 

 

As for the usual screams for more enforcement...why, didn't he have the required number of flares on board? Out of the three times I definitely was going to get hit in a canoe, two were law enforcement craft. Both times nobody was paying attention forward. More enforcement is meaningless until you actually get people on board that know what they're enforcing, instead of just treating marine units as just another patrol unit revenue generator.

[aplumma]

I've run boats up to 50 feet and never come any where near running someone over. Even when running home in the dark after doing charters for the old symphony of fire, fire works shows. After the show is over there are hundreds of boats heading home and never had anything close to an issue.

It's all common sense and courtesy for others.

 

Last year I was heading up the channel back to the dock after a day of fishing and there was a boat exiting the area. He was on the wrong side of the channel and I had to evade by leaving the channel. I ripped a strip of the guy, as it turned out he had a pack of rug rats on the boat that got an education in swearology that day.

The guy had no clue, I can only hop he ran a ground on a rock and no longer owns a boat.

 

I agree that common sense ,education and courtesy is the answer for a safer boating environment if one party has the ability to avoid incidences by his extra caution and superior knowledge that's a plus. Your second part though illustrates once again you can be the best driver of one boat but without the cooperation and knowledge of the others around you trouble can be found in the most unlikly/timley manner. A lot of what makes an incident dicey is when a scenario is set up by incompetence versus incompetence or in the above case incompetence versus inability it can have tragic consequences.

Education to ALL boaters either small or large should be mandatory with the same standards of education that match the waters they boat in. If you are on a large body of water were you will encounter barges or commercial vessels then you should know the rules they are held to so you know how they will react. If this is not required by law then by common sense it should be information you need to learn.

 

Even though a boat with a head and bed give you the privilege to serve alcohol to all none essential personnel it is still illegal to operate the vessel under the influence of drugs or alcohol. I still firmly believe that it is not the size of the boat that is lethal it is the knowledge of the operator.

 

Art

[Canuck]

I have run all sizes of boats over the years and there are a lot of careless drivers in the cruiser crowd. I boat GBay and my current ride is a 34 ft sea ray with my fishing boat being a 11 ft RIB dinghy with a 8hp Yamaha. My big boat throws a big wake so when I am passing near smaller boats I drop to idle speed. At least half the other cruisers out there do not slow down. Driving the big boat you really have to be 100% paying attention at all times. Visibility is OK when on plane, but there are lots of blind spots. This guy in the article made a huge bonehead mistake. The boat that got hit was a pretty big boat. I can't believe the cruiser driver would not have seen it unless he was not paying attention at all. Thank god no one was hurt.

 

One thing that I should let everyone know though is that when running at night, a cruiser has MUCH less chance of seeing you if you don't have the proper lighting. In a cruiser the driver is usually looking through glass or vinyl windows. At night it gets a lot harder to see a boat/canoe if they are without lights. If you fish at night, get yourself a portable light on a pole or something from BPS or Cdn Tire. And carry a flashlight and shine it towards any boat heading your way at speed at night in case they don't see you.

 

And one last comment. Lots of small boat drivers and especially PWC drivers do zip in and out around you when you are driving a cruiser. That is the most stupid thing you can do. A cruiser is NOT able to turn or stop on a dime. If you cut quickly in front of me, I can't avoid you. Also, my boat is a huge blind spot for you. I have personally seen two separate times when a PWC or small boat has cut around me only to realize at the last minute that there was another boat on the other side of me coming the other way.