We’re six months into the Covid-19 pandemic, holed up in Mesquite, Nevada and it is f…ing 115 degrees outside, not fit for man nor beast.
So, I have been amusing myself lately watching boating mishap videos on U-Tube.
For some reason, the dumbest people in the world seem to gravitate to boat ownership. Sure, there are a lot of smart and responsible boat people, but the really stupid folks, the Darwin Award candidates, invariably feel the need to demonstrate their incompetence and lack of common sense on lakes, rivers, and oceans. It is a primal urge, I think.
If I lived near a boat launching ramp, I would definitely make a weekly habit of grabbing a camera, a lunch bucket, and a folding chair and spending a few hours videoing idiots attempting to launch and recover their boats. Lots of laughs and never a dull moment.
For some reason, the homo sapiens species feels that if one can afford to acquire a boat, then that qualifies them to skillfully launch and skipper said conveyance. What could go wrong?
Plenty.
For one thing, God purposely made backing up a trailer a counter-intuitive skill, something that many people cannot master. Therefore, before the boat even gets near water, lots of things can go wrong, like jack-knifed trailers, collisions with other confused boating enthusiasts (who themselves can’t properly back up a trailer), and frustrated husbands, wives, and friends screaming at each other because their hand signals sucked. Sometimes fist fights break out.
Many of the U-Tube mishaps involve submerged tow vehicles, as in some doofus backed his boat-laden trailer too far down a launch ramp and then couldn’t get it out of the water. If you’ve ever launched or retrieved a boat at a ramp, you will recall that the pitch of the ramp can be significant and, usually, there’s f…ing moss on the ramp surface under the waterline. As in…no traction, Dummy!
Unfortunately, once your $50,000 truck is submerged, it is pretty much useless from that point forward.
For some reason, lots of unqualified boaters arrive at the ramp, either to launch or retrieve, under the influence of beer. This doesn’t help matters.
(We always had a speedboat when I was young; the whole family skied. I never launched a boat, thank goodness, because I’m not capable of backing up a trailer without a lot of luck. Thankfully, my Dad was a pro. He and my Mom, working as a team, could launch a boat at a ramp in one smooth motion. They would typically retrieve the boat and trailer using a 2” hawser that allowed the tow vehicle to pull the boat-laden trailer out of the water without the tow vehicle actually getting in the water.
I think I only saw one mishap in all of the years, and that occurred at Lake Havasu when we were trying to load the boat onto the trailer in a 50 mph wind. That sucked, we got it done, but my Dad ended up yelling at everyone. It was one of the only times I ever heard him swear.)
Once on the water in their boat or jet ski, many people don’t have respect for the wind, the waves, the tides, other folk on the water, or the speed they’re going. Passengers often do stupid things, as well, particularly if they’re under the influence. Lots of people, even drivers, fall out of boats. Go figure.
There are a multitude of U-Tube videos of watercraft ramming each other, people shifting weight and capsizing a small boat, and vessels that get swamped by ocean surf. And then, there are the accidents that occur when uncoordinated people, possibly under the influence, try to hop off or onto a boat from a dock. Ha ha.
As Clint Eastwood said, “Man’s gotta know his limitations.” That’s true, and overweight, uncoordinated women, as well.
Skippering a boat is a tremendous responsibility, as it is a lethal weapon…without brakes.
Some of the U-Tube videos show large ships that got away from their skilled operators and crashed into docks, other ships, bridges, and such. A captain of a cruise ship once told me that if a passenger fell overboard it would take about a mile to stop his ship and about an hour to circle back to when the man went overboard. Good luck with that.
Unskilled boat operators, many times while inebriated, underestimate the speed of the boat or misread conditions. Some of the U-Tube videos show boats driving up onto boat ramps, over docks, and getting flipped in the surf zone.
Some nincompoops run into bridges with boats.
Actually, that happened to me, while I was skippering a house boat on the Sacramento Delta. I had seven adults on the top deck to give me a shout if we weren’t going to clear the bridge at high tide. I was virtually idling the houseboat, just barely moving forward. Of course, my team of crack lookouts were all drinking alcoholic beverages, playing loud music, having a gay old time, and no one paid much attention…until my exhaust pipe (mast) got bent by the bottom of the bridge.
Ooooooh, was I mad!
Like I said, lots of dumbasses drive boats. I was one of them, trusting seven drunk adults in the crow’s nest to shout an alarm. Stupid is as stupid does.
But, at least there wasn’t a cameraman there to document my folly.