Thanks to Craig Russell of H2uh0 - Bonehead Moves on the Water for drawing our attention to this amazing video of a boating accident and the subsequent rescue attempts.
It is, of course, a reenactment, from an "informational reality-based television series" called Rescue 911 which apparently was hosted by Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise before he landed the gig with priceline.com that made him famous.
I am sure that my eagle-eyed readers with their wealth of boating knowledge will, like me, be cringing at the various mistakes that led to this accident and that could easily have caused a real tragedy.
It's a gorgeous early summer weekend in my part of the world that is certain to bring many boaters, experienced and novice, cautious and reckless, out on to the water.
Please feel free to contribute your wisdom in the comments.
Help boaters learn the lessons from this video.
Tell them how to play safe.
7 comments:
This is obviously a reckless re-creation, at best, of something that supposedly happened. At worse, it's a reckless stunt.
Actually the same thing crossed my mind Doc. Even doing the stunts for the reenactment looked pretty hairy. But then, not everything that Captain Kirk appeared to do on Star Trek was actually real, so I'm told. Sometimes the camera does lie.
Clearly the first mistake was being in a power boat to begin with ...
I wonder what professional rescuers would have done. The best thing I could think of to do would be to use a boat hook, long-armed fishing net, or similar tool to reach the gearshift or throttle lever. Another, really tricky one might be to try to stream a line or net on purpose to get tangled in the prop.
What would Captain Kirk have done?
Since they were in Oklahoma, after all, I'm surprised no one in the larger boat thought of simply lassoing the runaway outboard and then going on a ... what? ... Oklahoma sleigh ride?
In other news there was an unfortunate boating accident in Manukau Harbour, Auckland in the weekend. Don't think the occupants were wearing life jackets. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10807612
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