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Another night time boat crash on my lake

sunedog

sunedog

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A week or so ago I posted some stories of three different night time boat crashes on Lake Murray in SC over the last few years. It looks like that thread was deleted.

My argument was in support of lights other than the traditional tiny green/red/white lights to make boats more visible and avoid night time collisions. We had another crash over the weekend between a houseboat and a bass boat. It is miraculous no one was reported to be injured in this one.
boat crash.jpg
 
Correction. Looks like driver of bass boat was injured. Found this on FB:
boat crash 2.PNG
 
I'm not one for much government intervention and overreach, but I'd fully support new regulations for an increased minimum nav light luminosity, leading to increased required distance visibility.
 
DejaWiz said:
I'm not one for much government intervention and overreach, but I'd fully support new regulations for an increased minimum nav light luminosity, leading to increased required distance visibility.
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AND MANDATORY BOATING LICENSING!!
 
I agree with SemperFi. Mandatory licensing can't hurt and I truly believe it can reduce the number of incidents.
Before I owned by current pontoon, I just did what I wanted out on the water and looking back, I know I did many wrong and illegal things and put myself and my passengers in danger. When I got my current pontoon, I took an online boater's safety course. This may be some of the best use of 2-3 hours I ever spent to do something with. I learned so much from knowing what the various buoy colors mean to common courtesy of prepping before the launch ramp to what the navigation lights actually mean, when you have the right away and when you don't. In general, I don't think people know what the different combinations of colors mean and that is leading to some of these accidents, along with being under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.
 
Think about it. People are buying 50mph tritoons weighing 3000+ pounds without any type of boat knowledge or training (depending on where you live). It’s scary, especially at night.
We have rental toons on our lake and they have no clue about basic boat to right, right of way, sailboats under sail right of way, etc ...
 
No argument about the importance of boater education. But I don't think this one had anything to do with boater knowledge or right of way. The bay boat just flat out ran into the house boat from behind at a fairly high rate of speed. I have to conclude it was because he didn't see him.

Here's another picture from the other side. The husband of the house boat says he was standing at the helm where the boat ended up. He dove onto his wife and both of then were somehow uninjured.

boat crash 3.jpg
 
sunedog said:
No argument about the importance of boater education. But I don't think this one had anything to do with boater knowledge or right of way. The bay boat just flat out ran into the house boat from behind at a fairly high rate of speed. I have to conclude it was because he didn't see him.

Here's another picture from the other side. The husband of the house boat says he was standing at the helm where the boat ended up. He dove onto his wife and both of then were somehow uninjured.

View attachment 27663
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Wow!
 
I'm not a fan of high speed after dark. I recognize that laws reflecting that would not be practical, but I'm just saying that if you don't need too be traveling at a high rate of speed, why would you want to expose yourself and passengers to the un-needed risks?
 
My thought is, how fast would you drive a car on a pitch black night, with no headlights, and no idea what’s out in front of you. Probably fairly slow. That’s knowledge and and wisdom. Luckily he or others didn’t take this lesson to the grave.
 
I would have to agree with Dave, in my mind, this has less to do with lights and more to do with stupidity. I mean it's a frigging house boat!! It's one thing if it was a canoe that had NO lights, but a house boat is a pretty large unit, big enough for the other guy to park his boat in (not meant for humour). So obviously the issue was speed. No different than the highway laws, "drive accordingly to the road conditions" .

The thing about lights while underway is that then you run the risk of blinding / night vision loss of the other boater. It should be mandatory to have your safe boating license, it is here in Canada (but it's also illegal to consume ANY alcohol on a boat here, for ANYONE, so don't follow all our footsteps on that!)
 
Last year there was two families out on a boat after dark and the guy hit a channel marker throwing people overboard. His wife and their friends 2 year old didn’t make it. Turns out they had been drinking and now he’s looking at some substantial jail time. Another avoidable tragedy.
 
I definitely am a fan of boater education. While I have been a passenger for many years, when I finally bought my own boat I was faced with the stark realization that not only am I responsible for my own life but those of my passengers. I took the boater education course and watched a ton of videos before getting my boat. I also don’t drink when I’m driving (get my buzz from driving my boat).

While more lights would be nice, I agree with being blinded by others lights. Coming back from a 4th of July fireworks show in Marco island some boats had their flood lights on and were blinding me. Made it real difficult to navigate even at minimum wake speeds. While I could easily see other boats I couldn’t see the channel or other obstacles in the water that are not lit up. I had a handheld spot that I would turn on briefly when it got real bad.

Unlike on the road when an on coming car blinds you with headlights, you don’t have the white line on the side of the road or streetlights to keep the road illuminated.

Generally I don’t go out at night, but the few times that I do, it is a lot easier to see when not blinded by someone else’s lights.
 
We boat at night or later evening regularly, We have slightly lighted channel markers, but we see bass boat coming in late evening without their nav lights on every night we are out. Driving pretty fast as well and we have had a couple close calls. I run my docking lights sometimes and when not many are out i think everyone should run them if they have them, i would rather be (very slightly) blinded by docking lights than not see the boat at all.
 
It is common on my lake for fishermen and others to run full throttle at night and in heavy fog only using GPS. We have had a few somewhat close encounters with them. Reducing the number of boating fatalities will take easily accessible training / licensing coupled with high-profile, strict law enforcement. We seldom see water patrol where we boat. Just this past weekend and only a few miles from our place, a man and his six-year old daughter were killed when their jet ski was hit by another jet ski during daylight hours. Initial reports indicate the other driver was under the influence of alcohol, which resulted in two families being destroyed...one by death and the other by guilt (and probably prison). As for night driving, I agree with Semper. Why go faster than your visibility safely allows? Most of us don't have radar that tells us where boats and other obstacles are hidden. So slow down.
 
David G said:
We boat at night or later evening regularly, We have slightly lighted channel markers, but we see bass boat coming in late evening without their nav lights on every night we are out. Driving pretty fast as well and we have had a couple close calls. I run my docking lights sometimes and when not many are out i think everyone should run them if they have them, i would rather be (very slightly) blinded by docking lights than not see the boat at all.
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I'm a hard no on running docking lights while underway...those things are horrible and can ruin a good nite on the lake, and have many times for us....boater safety courses and common sense should rule, buy often don't..
 
rodsfields said:
I definitely am a fan of boater education. While I have been a passenger for many years, when I finally bought my own boat I was faced with the stark realization that not only am I responsible for my own life but those of my passengers. I took the boater education course and watched a ton of videos before getting my boat. I also don’t drink when I’m driving (get my buzz from driving my boat).

While more lights would be nice, I agree with being blinded by others lights. Coming back from a 4th of July fireworks show in Marco island some boats had their flood lights on and were blinding me. Made it real difficult to navigate even at minimum wake speeds. While I could easily see other boats I couldn’t see the channel or other obstacles in the water that are not lit up. I had a handheld spot that I would turn on briefly when it got real bad.

Unlike on the road when an on coming car blinds you with headlights, you don’t have the white line on the side of the road or streetlights to keep the road illuminated.

Generally I don’t go out at night, but the few times that I do, it is a lot easier to see when not blinded by someone else’s lights.
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And the docking light are simply not set up like car lights with cutoff lines and proper alignment etc...often aiming every which way...usually way high....they suck, and a huge pet peeve of mine...if you can't tell...lol
 
A pretty interesting video of Sea Tow pulling the bay boat out of the houseboat. I was surprised how small the houseboat was. And the Ranger bay boat fared pretty well. I am impressed with the toughness. You can skip to about the 2:00 minute mark to see the fun stuff.

Facebook video of pulling Ranger boat out
 
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