Hey Mates!
Just wanted to drop a friendly reminder on boating safety with the upcoming holiday weekend.
This last weekend on both Friday and Saturday night I was witness to a couple of incidents that could have ended a lot worse than they did.
Let me start with Friday. While anchored fishing for Catfish, a boat is heading upstream ,it was approximately 11:00pm when we saw them round a corner and start heading up river towards us. We had on our lights while being anchored. They proceeded to speed up and give us a wide berth. We were on an outside bend in deeper water, so they decided to stay close to the other side where there was a sand bar. As they got closer they appeared to speed up….. When all of a sudden we heard a Smack and the motor start revving really loud. They had struck the sand bar at a fair clip. We immediately turn our spotlight on them to see if assistance was necessary. The Captain (if we can call him that)shouted that everything was fine. While some female was Yahooing. It would have appeared that someone had their share of beverages. The most disturbing part of the sequence was that there was a younger kid in the boat. After they got off the bar, their motor did not sound the same as it did prior and they continued up stream. If they had been using a spotlight and traveling at a safe rate of speed the incident probably would have been avoided.
The next incident occurred Saturday evening, It was a minor collision in the middle of the river. One boat was anchored in the main channel with no lights. The other boat was traveling upstream with out using a spot light. It occurred in an area that had bright shore lighting but the boat was parked in the shadows. Luckily the moving boat was going a slower pace. When the anchored boat captain shouted out at the last minute. The driving captain quickly adjusted course but not enough to avoid collision and damaging their boat.
Lets keep safety in the forefront with the end of summer and holiday weekend approaching. There is the potential for lots of people to be on the water, many of whom are not experienced and some will be intoxicated. You can do everything by the book and still get caught in a situation that can turn disastrous.
Thanks for being safe out there.