"My eyes are dead on the kid and he sees the pontoon boat coming. " From
the above quote.

Ian Malcolm wrote:

Charles wrote:


Gang,

I want to relay an "occurrence" that happened at my local lake this past
weekend. You are NOT getting this story third hand. I was THERE, I SAW it.
This isn't one of those, "I know someone who saw...."

Anyway, I stopped by a friend's house up at the lake this past Sunday. They
had a big crowd all hanging around and we were standing on the dock talking.
There was a fairly large pontoon boat tied along the front or lake-side edge

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of the dock. This wasn't on the main lake, but the cove wasn't no-wake.
It's a pretty big cove. Anyway, I was marginally aware of someone out in
the middle towing a tuber but not really watching them closely.

I heard him come by and it seemed fairly close when he passed. Then all of
the women on the dock started screaming "Too close" and I saw the kid in the
tube, headed right for the front of the pontoon boat. The driver had
misjudged or didn't know about the tube "sweeping" wide on the turn. My
eyes are dead on the kid and he sees the pontoon boat coming. He ducks down
tight inside the tube. I didn't see it but apparently the driver saw what
was happening a second or so before and finally backed off. Way too much
momentum to really matter at this point. Well, the tube goes right down the
"tunnel" between the pontoons. The boat is heavier in the back (of course)
so the gap between the bottom of the decking and the water gets narrower as
you go. The tube, kid inside, wedges itself between the deck and the water
about 2/3 the length of the boat.

The women are screaming, the rest of the kids are crying, everyone who could
swim jumps in and drags the tube back out from under the pontoon boat. Not
a scratch on him. He wasn't even crying or really all that upset.

I know what a lot of you are thinking here. The first thought is almost for
sure just anger and calling this guy names. Second thought is, what could
"I" have done, besides not pulling a tube anywhere near another boat or
dock. Let's take a look at the math here. I worked this up at lunch today:

Let's assume the guy was pulling the tube at 20 mph. Not an unreasonable
speed for a tube and I've been wakeboarding for years at 19.5. I feel like
I'm a pretty good judge of 20mph. Anyway, 20 mph is 1760 feet/min which
turns into about 29 feet per second. Let's also assume that the driver saw
what was happening the minute he crossed the bow of the pontoon and has a
zero reaction time to slam into reverse or something. With a 60 foot rope,
he has two seconds before the tube hits the pontoon boat. At 15 mph he has
just a little less than three seconds. "Time is the fire in which we burn."
I ripped that off from a Star Trek movie. With between two or three seconds
at most, that kid is hitting the boat. The math is right there.

Anyway, I am not here to pass judgment or call him names. I'm not going to
get into what "could have happened." I'm telling this story because I want
all of you to always keep in mind what's going on out there. It's all great
fun and everything is a blast until something goes wrong. Please don't let
an inexperienced driver pull a tube or a skier. If that means you, well
maybe the shoe fits.

Be careful out there gang. It's easy to get complacent. Believe me, you
don't want to see something like this happen in front of you. It was really
horrible.

Charles



"Capt. Frank" wrote:

Hi Charles,

They sound like a perfect candidates for the USCG Auxillary Boating
safety class. The kid was just plain luckey.

It sounds like between the pontoon boat and the tow boat the bunch
managed to ignore most of the "rules of the road."

The tow boat would have been held culpable had the kid been injured.
I did not notice you mention the pontoon sounding his horn as he left
the dock in a traffic area.
It also sounds as though the tow operator was not familure enough with
his equipment.

I am glad no one was hurt and there was no property damage.

Capt. Frank USCG-A
La Dolce Vita
Formula 26 PC



The way it read to me and everyone else is that the pontoon boat remained
MOORED alongside the dock througout the incident. The driver mentioned is
the driver of the tow boat. Please clarify how or if the pontoon boat
ignored the ColRegs.