Booze and Boats - Personal Stories
 

How about your personal experiences? I'll start. A few years ago I approached a fine girl eating a burger at an outdoor joint near the San Jacinto River, a popular boating and water ski river in Houston. I struck up a conversation and quickly got to watersports. I asked if she was a skier or boater and she said "well, I used to be." I asked further and she said "do you remember the guy who got his right leg sawed off by a boat propeller several years ago on the river by a drunk driving a 90 mph outboard? That was my boyfriend at the time. I remember him falling while skiing and this maniac laughing wildly and narrowly missing our boat as he screamed by but he did not miss my boyfriend. It was all we could do to save his life that day."

I took my kid to a boater safety class a few years ago. They had a guy come in as a guest speaker. He was doing community service hours because of killing a kid in the water that had been skiing. He blew a .2 after the accident. The incident had put him in jail and he said it was over 25k in fines and lawyer fees. He wept as he told the story.

------Many years ago (circa 1979) on the Fox Lakes in Ill my wife and I were at a restraunt/bar next to the coast guard station. We had been out for several hours in our X18 DONZI.
------While waiting for a couple of cheeseburgers I noticed the coasties pulling in a badly damaged family style 20 foot boat. The windshield was crushed flat and much damage was done to the top decks and passenger compartment. The boat turned out to be a week old out on its second trip with a couple and their two children.
------It was nearing dusk as they were going thru a passage from one lake to another when a second boat (around 25/27ft.) with two very drunk guys came up from behind them. The two guys were doing around 50/60 according to the coasties when they hit the stern of that week old boat. Up over the stern and over the passenger compartment, and bow went the dummies and then they hit the water in front of the boat they totalled and kept on going.
------When tracked down later they claimed they never knew they hit anything. Think they were over the limit??? Thankfully, the couple and their kids didnt die that day because the wife turned around, just barely saw the dummies and she and her husband were able to save their kids as well as themselves.
------Ive always remembered this incident and just saw an old picture my wife took of the damaged boat the next day in one of our photo albums. We lived far enough away from the lakes that we never did hear what happened to those idiots, but I have often wondered if that evening straightened them out. Hope so!!!.....Bill S