On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:52:22 -0700 (PDT), -hh
wrote:

ComandanteBanana wrote:
-hh wrote:
KingOfTheApes wrote:

Many people that are into motorboating
are poorly educated and...

Kind of an interesting self-contradiction
you're making, by first talking about how
these boats are huge and expensive, yet now
they're owned by uneducated high school
dropouts, which is a demographic with
very low incomes...

First of all, there are "lions" out there
and "wannabes." Meaning there are many big
yachts and cigarette boats owned by the filthy
rich, and then crappy motorboats of all kinds
...
It's a matter of STATUS. Just like cars.
"Money to burn"=3DBig Yacht & SUV.
"Survivor"=3Dold car and boat.

Agreed, but this is hardly new news. Mahogany hulled Chris-Craft
powerboats have been around since the 1920s, as well as efforts over
the years to broaden the market base to the middle class; one can
suggest that Boston Whaler contributed to this trend too, staring in
the mid-1950s.


But motorboat pollution contributes to
"the soup" out there too...

You sure that you're not smelling naturally
occurring organics? Afterall, the ICW runs
through a lot of muddy marshes and estuaries.

I can tell the smell of gas. And you can see
it floating all over the place.

Maybe in a marina. Gas is a light aeromatic and disappears quite
rapidly. If its not natural marsh stuff, its more likely to be
diesel, which tends to be more of what larger working boats tend to
use, not your generic commercial pleasure boat 30ft.

And when a motorboats goes by, you can get
some serious second hand smoke.

While there's always going to be the occasional gross polluter, they
generally are quite uncommon. Turbo-diesels will smoke when under
heavy load, such as a 40 footer trying to get home on one engine.


0.04% incidence. =A0Yes, very 'startling'. =A0
You would have to boat for over 25 years just
to get up to a 1% risk.

I bet many of those registered boats don't
even make it to the water (they look good parked
on the driveway).

Catch-22 alert: if these are your high risk "unskilled" boaters, if
they're parked at home, they can't be a risk at sea.

And the kayaks stay away from those motorboat
highways, so the statistics may be misleading.

Kayaks aren't a class of boat requiring registration, so the actual
total numbers are higher, which means that the actual statistical risk
is even lower.


But your common sense tells you they are a real
threat. More than terrorists, say.

Common sense says that all parties should take responsibility for
their decisions, which includes wandering out into harm's way when you
suspect that there are operators of less than stellar skill levels
present. Yes, it is "unfair", but life is unfair: you either deal
with it and roll with the punches, or die from being too inflexible.


-hh

Totally untrue, if I spill gas while refueling. THe gas doc will
surround the area with absorption material, and clean it up, I have to
file an EPA report on how it happened, and how I will prevent it in
the future

On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:19:41 -0700 (PDT), KingOfTheApes
wrote:

On Aug 23, 6:06 pm, "Lee Bell" wrote:
Sometimes that law doesn't exist or is not enforced and they just
follow the Law of the Jungle. If you talk about the channels their
speeds are not terribly willd, but still you are a sitting duck.

It exists everywhere you're ever likely to be in your kayak. There's more
enforcement on the intracoastal, per boater, than in any city or state
anywhere near here.

Yes, you are a sitting duck, which is a really good reason not to go where
you can't be safe. I presume you would not ride your bicycle on I-95, which
would you ride you kayak in a zone where running on a plane is legal?

Not only I wouldn't ride on a highway, I wouldn't even ride on the
street right in front of my door. It's so bad that most people stay
away from riding bikes on the road around here and rather ride the
sidewalks...

Of course, you ain't safe there either. Just today, as I was coming
down on the sidewalk to cross this intersection, a car came blasting
the horn at me because he felt every right to beat me to the corner. I
had to use my brakes to the limit or else. That was a close call. And
the guy kept going like nothing. I'm sure he knows we've got few
rights --if any.

Then you realize you live in the jungle.

Welcome to the Jungle --if you dare.

WHY THE BANANA REVOLUTION?
http://webspwner.com/users/bananarevolution
Sounds like you are suffering from "lack of sack" desease and whinning
about it. Bycyles have as much right on our roadways as cars do, and
have no right on the side walks.

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:51:35 -0700 (PDT), ComandanteBanana
wrote:

10 Cyclists Struck by a Taxi on the Causeway to Miami Beach

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=457751


"A civilized society cannot let the law of the jungle rule its roads;
if we want to ensure fairness, government must act to protect the
weak."

And why should we protect the monkey, not the lion? Because then the
lion will eat the monkey, stupid. And that keeps the other monkeys
terrorized, which is not what we want. We want them to come out,
right?

Here's a smart comment on the subject...

"The purpose of the police power is to protect public health, safety,
and welfare. When it comes down to cars vs. bicycles, the latter need
greater protection than the former -- after all, cars kill more
Americans than guns do, whereas beds kill more Americans than bikes
do.

That's why places which truly embrace bicycling as a valid (and safe)
mode of transportation have laws that aren't fair: bicycles get more
rights than cars. In many northern European countries, the driver is
always at fault in a bicycle-car crash. Some municipalities even
completely exempt bicycles from many road regulations (like one-way
traffic flow) -- since such regulations are often intended to regulate
cars (in the one-way example, that street might be too narrow for two
cars to pass but plenty wide for two bikes to pass).

A civilized society cannot let the law of the jungle rule its roads;
if we want to ensure fairness, government must act to protect the
weak.

The #1 reason that people cite for not bicycling more often is that
they feel that biking is unsafe. It isn't, really -- in fact, not
bicycling degrades your life expectancy more than bicycling -- but it
can be made much safer through good policies, enforced fairly."

Posted by PCC | June 25, 2008 8:30 PM

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.c..._hierarchy.php
As are the laws here, hit a bycyclest here and you are in trouble.
What happened to the cab driver ?

Why would anyone care unless they were planning to sue or something?
I've been kayaking all over the east coast, from Maine to the
Everglades, and I find personal water craft far more irritating,
hazardous, and likely to be in unskilled hands than any kind of
smudgepot (power boat).

Here's a smart comment on the subject...

"The purpose of the police power is to protect public health, safety,
and welfare. When it comes down to cars vs. bicycles, the latter need
greater protection than the former -- after all, cars kill more
Americans than guns do, whereas beds kill more Americans than bikes
do.

Smart except for being completely wrong. The purpose of the police power is
to investigate, apprehend and bring criminals to the judicial portion of the
American system.

Totally untrue, if I spill gas while refueling. THe gas doc will
surround the area with absorption material, and clean it up, I have to
file an EPA report on how it happened, and how I will prevent it in
the future

The gas doc? What's a gas doc?

Personally, I sprinkle some Dawn dishwashing detergent around. Presto, no
more gas slick.

Lee

Sounds like you are suffering from "lack of sack" desease and whinning
about it. Bycyles have as much right on our roadways as cars do, and
have no right on the side walks.

I believe that varies with location, but it's certainly true in many
locations.

Lee

Galen Hekhuis wrote

Why would anyone care unless they were planning to sue or something?
I've been kayaking all over the east coast, from Maine to the
Everglades, and I find personal water craft far more irritating,
hazardous, and likely to be in unskilled hands than any kind of
smudgepot (power boat).

You hit that one right on the nose except, of course, for the smudgepot
part.

Lee

"Lee Bell" wrote:
Totally untrue, if I spill gas while refueling. THe gas doc will
surround the area with absorption material, and clean it up, I have to
file an EPA report on how it happened, and how I will prevent it in
the future

The gas doc? *What's a gas doc?

Dock. It doesn't matter too much anyway, because now the discussion
is shifting.

It started as claims of pollution from normal running conditions that
was observed along protected waters (eg, ICW), but this is talking
about a semi-"point" source of pollution, namely a spill occurring at
refueling stations.


Personally, I sprinkle some Dawn dishwashing detergent around.
*Presto, no more gas slick.

Of course, another option when refueling, is to not spill so much fuel
(such that the Sheen Rule is invoked, etc).

And from a similar observation of human nature, a chronic spiller may
very well get inconvenienced by the owner of the refueling station to
report every spill no matter how small (ie, well below reporting
threshold). We can all figure out the real reasons why.


-hh

ComandanteBanana wrote:
"Lee Bell" wrote:

You do know that, by putting a trolling motor on your kayak, you're
classified as a power boat, right?

Oh, give me a break. At worst I'd be a hybrid. Small, slow, noiseless
and backed up by paddles.

Irrelevant, since "The Law is The Law".

At one point, my Canoe was registered as a 'powerboat'. And I recall
that it was a bit of a nuisance to get it fit with letters of the
required minimum height for its Registration#.


Many people that are into motorboating are poorly educated and
couldn't care less about the consequences of their actions. I think
MOTORBOATING IS LARGELY FOR COUCH POTATOES THAT WANT TO
HAVE A DEGREE OF ADVENTURE IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS.

Yet, in the same post, you identified yourself as a power boater.

But not a threat to anything.

Except as a threat to navigation, when in the wrong place.




My anchor weighs 1 1/2 lbs... Terrible threat to the reefs.

It's almost exactly the same threat as mine. An anchor that sets and stays
in place, does very little damage to anything and there's already a law
requiring people to anchor in adjacent sand areas rather than on coral.
Chain and line, on the other hand, can do quite a bit of damage, whether
attached to a kayak or different kind of power boat.

I'd look before I anchor to a reef, don't you?

Oh, to always have the luxury of being able to look through perfectly
clear water.


How much you need for a motorboat?

Which power boat? I have three and, as I've already mentioned, a kayak.
Anchors for each boat is designed for the boat I use it with. My smallest
power boat uses an anchor just like the one I use for the kayak.

OK, why don't you get rid of the big ones?

The proper sizing of an anchor is predicted on several factors, not
just the size of the craft.



But motorboat pollution contributes to "the soup" out there too. You
can even smell the gas, and I doubt it that it would be safe to swim
in the intracostal anymore.

What you can smell is not harming the reefs. As for what you doubt, I
suggest you learn a bit more before getting it wrong again. If you're
talking about human waste by those on boats, I'm afraid you'll have to
include kayakers in your list. It's legal for either of us to use the
ocean as a bathroom. It is not legal for me to discharge my head directly
overboard or to discharge my holding tank within coastal waters. The sewage
outfalls in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties, on the other hand, pump
millions of gallons of partially treated sewage and chemicals onto the reefs
every day.

Can the government ever be that bad? They claim they treat everything
at Virginia Key...

http://www.reef-rescue.org/research/keywestcitizenpage1.pdf
http://www.reef-rescue.org/MiamiHerald/
Oceanisnoplacefortreatedsewage.pdf

Here's their homepage; note the 'Donate' button:
http://www.reef-rescue.org/


Do you do kayaking by any chance, or you just represent the
motorboating association?

Apparently, you find it utterly incomprehensible for there to be
people who actually own both powered and unpowered watercraft,
particularly when their perspectives and conclusions are at odds with
yours.



-hh