Monday, July 19, 2010

Exciting Weekend on the Water

Capsizes, rescues, fires add to an already hot weekend

With scorching temperatures across the country over the weekend, it's no wonder so many boaters took to the water if they were able. But when there are lots of boats in the water, unfortunately, there are often lots of mishaps… and there were a few stories that caught our attention this morning.

On Saturday night, a boat capsized in the Mississippi River near Hampton Illinois. In the true spirit of an accident happening in the region known as the “Quad Cities”, first responders included brave folks from East Moline, Rock Island County, Illinois Conservation Police, and Hampton Fire. Read more about the rescue of these boaters, who may or may not have been drinking, and who may or may not have been wearing life jackets, according to these two articles (wqad.com, kwqc.com)

As both articles mention, and as we get all preachy about on our boating safety page, life jackets would have been key in this situation, and kudos to the boaters if they were actually wearing them.

On Lake Michigan Sunday, a flash storm snuck up on at least one couple and capsized their 18 foot boat. After an hour in heavy rain and rough water, 6 miles from shore, they were rescued by a chartered fishing boat according to the Chicago Sun-Times. This author would like to think they drifted quite a bit before being rescued rather than think they were six miles out in a rowboat with a storm approaching.
Would a weather radio have helped these boaters avoid this near-tragedy?

A catastrophic scene played out in slow motion on Sunday when a sport fishing boat docked at Port Canaveral Yacht Club (in Florida) caught fire, burned free from its mooring, and floated into several other boats and docks. Four additional boats were damaged. Full story and pictures are at FloridaToday.com


There were several other incidents on the water over the weekend, but hopefully you had a safe time on the water. And this would be a good time to remind you that there's never a bad time to review the boating safety tips on FirstBoat.com.

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1 comment:

  1. A terrible incident weather it is a whale crashing down on your deck or a storm capsizing your boat can and does happen. Okay so whales aren't leaping into boats all that often but apparently it can happen. Safety can't be preached enough. A life vest might keep you from getting a tan but it will save your life. A weather radio will warn you of an approaching storm in time for you to maneuver out of the area.

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