On 26 Aug 2005 11:52:18 -0700, "Oci-One Kanubi"
wrote:

Is this news?

Garrison Hilliard wrote:
By Ryan Clark
Enquirer staff writer

DAYTON, Ky. - All along the river here, where gawkers mixed with
passersby, everyone wanted to know what happened. Why did the boat go out
so early in the morning?

What difference does it make why they went out? What might matter is
the condition of the pilot (inebbriated? drugged up?)

Why couldn't they signal the oncoming barge?

Maybe they did.

Why couldn't the barge see the small houseboat?

Maybe it did.

The quiet marinas lining
Northern Kentucky were mobbed after a man was killed, another escaped and
two others are missing after a barge hit their 36-foot houseboat
overnight.

[snip]

"It's just so dangerous," he said. "... People need to know that there are
times when it's hard to see you out there."

It's *always* difficult for a large vessel to see a small one.

I don't live near one of those commercial arteries, but I am dam' sure
those barges (especially when they are rafted up) are pigs when it come
to emergency evasive maneuvers, and I am sure that if I put on the
river -- day *or* night -- I would regard it as *my* responsibility to
stay out of their way.

This pathetic article didn't give a word of description of the barge
itself, which might have helped in understanding how the incident
occured. I thought the job of the reporter was to give us answers, not
questions. *My* question is: why did he bother to turn in the article
before he gathered a description of the barge and interviewed the
survivor? Of *course* "everyone wanted to know what happened", and it
is the reporter's job to tell them!

Thanks for posting this, Garrison. I'm starting to take an interest in
the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers, and what goes on on 'em. I
wish the reporter had actually reported something substantive.


-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty

Two weekends ago my brother, my two sisters and I took a two day river
trip on my 19 foot cuddy down the Ohio from Pittsburgh to (almost)
Marietta OH. This is about 150 miles and 5 locks. Anyway, on Saturday
night we tied up at a dock on the Ohio side. My sisters slept in the
cuddy and my brother and I slept on the fold-down seats - him on the
dock side and me on the river side. About 3:30 in the morning I hear
my brother yelling at me to wake up. I did so just in time to see a
wall of steel no more than 6 or 8 feet from me (it felt more like 6 or
8 inches). It was the last boat in a 3 wide by 5 boat long barge. It
seems that two barges were passing each other right there and the one
on our side was getting a lot closer to shore than I have ever seen a
barge get while underway. It was completely unloaded and thus took
little draft and was waaaaay up out of the water. It scared the sh*t
out of me. My brother was just as bad. The waves that followed after
the tug passed really rocked the hell out of the boat and the dock we
were tied up to, but the sisters slept through it. A few more feet
closer and they might never have found any of us - certainly not
alive. It was an experience. Next time I might consider stopping on
the non-channel side of some island and turning on the anchor lights
(even though we weren't actually anchored).

The Other Dave Hall